Being, Nothing and God: A Philosophy of Appearance 9023200616

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BEING, NOTHING AND GOD

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�6.':--··); GEORGE J. SEibEL /

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BEING, NOTHING AND GOD ,, A PHILOSOPHY OF APPEARANCE

ASSEN, 1970 VAN GORCUM

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COMP. N.V. - DR. H.

J.

PRAKKE

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H. M. G. PRAKKE

© 1970 Copyright in the Netherlands, by Koninklijke Van Gorcum & Comp. N.V., Assen, The Netherlands. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permis­ sion from the publisher. ISBN 90 232 0061 6

Printed in the Netherlands by Royal VanGorcum Ltd.

PREFACE

This is, in some respects, a new work. But in others, it is an old one. It is old in the sense that I have been writing and re­ writing it, off and one, for about ten years. It is also old in that it stands in a long and ancient tradition, stretching from Parmenides to Heidegger. In part III, entitled 'A Brief History of Nothing,' I have attempted to sketch, in the philosophical tradition of the West, the basis for the position that I have taken; so that what might otherwise be viewed as a preposterous example of philo­ sophical writing may be seen and appreciated in its historical perspective. In other words, despite the appearances, this is a thoroughly traditional work, resting upon the philosophical tradi­ tion inaugurated by the Greeks some 2500 years ago. It is necessary beforehand to apologize for the style of the work. It is at times overly ponderous and technical; at other times, too colloquial. In an earlier exposition, approximately twice the length of the present one, there were many more examples to assist the reader. These have been largely deleted, because they tended to point away from the main lines of the argument, to make the work excessively rambling in character, and to leave it open to a cosmological, rather than a strictly ontological interpretation. I am deeply indebted to the admirable men, my professors and friends, who had a part in my intellectual formation at Rome, in Germany, and at the University of Toronto. More specifically, I should like to thank Dr. Bede Ernsdorff and Prof. Thomas Langan for their kindness in reading the manuscript in earlier versions, and offering many valuable suggestions for its improvement: and Mrs. Vincent Hayward for her expert help in preparing the typescript. Finally, special thanks are due to my aunt, Gertrude Herring, for checking the manuscript and otherwise helping it through press. G.J.S.

CONTENTS

Preface CHAPTER

I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

Introduction BEING .

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I

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r . The Appearance of Being 2. Adequale and Completing Knowledge of the Thing 3. The Essential and Being. 4. Thing and Being . . . . . . . . 5. Being and Truth . . . . . . . . Scholion: The Refutation of Relativism

ro 21 28 35 39 45

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NOTHING .

54 63 64 65 66 67 69 70 71 73

I. The Early Greek Philosophers . 2. Parmenides 3. The Atomists 4. Plato . 5. Aristotle. 6. Plotinus . 7. Augustine 8. Anselm CHAPTER IV

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 62

9.

IO.

I I. 12.

13.

14.

15. r6. 17.

NOTHING

I. Things and Time . Time and Being 3. Nothing and Non-being 2.

CHAPTER

V

GOD .

r. 2. 3. 4. CHAPTER VI

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The Problem of God. The Being of God . Immanence and Transcendence. Atheism and Mysticism

Thomas Aquinas . Leibnitz Kant. Fichte Schelling Hegel Nietzsche . Sartre Heidegger

75 75 8r 87 93 93 96 102

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CON CL USION.

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NOTES .

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INDEX •

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117

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This work represents the attempt to think through certain long-standing and traditional problems in philosophy, particularly in the light of questions posed by the modern physical sciences, on the one hand, and by contemporary theology on the other. As such, the approach implies a specific view of the nature and function of philosophy, namely that philosophy acts as a synthesis between science and theology. A synthesis is not, however, a system. In an age of knowledge explosions and intellectual fragmentation the whole idea of system immediately and necessarily becomes suspect. I have, nevertheless, attempted to think through the problems which I am convinced are most pertinent at present for philosophy to consider, and this in a systematic fashion. To proceed systematically is not to attempt to build a metaphysical system. To proceed in this way, however, means that there will be areas which will be touched upon only lightly, or treated only obliquely; for example, the present-day state of scientific and theological knowledge which the philosopher attempts to synthesize. The fact that science is always discovering new things and the fact of the evolution of dogma in theology provide at least two reasons why the synthesis between science and theology, which would be the function of philosophy, must be made anew in every age. This does not mean that the material from past syntheses may not be useful, nor does it make the truth of any and every philosophical synthesis purely relative to historical circumstance, or to the state of scientific and theological knowledge at that partic­ ular time. The highest reach of philosophy, namely metaphysics, extends beyond the space-time continuum of historical occurrence, attempting to establish those things which must be true of every philosophical synthesis, as well as in the particular one that is 1

actually made. Still, there are elements in any philosophical syn­ thesis, which do depend upon the relative truths of present scientific knowledge, theological opinion, and philosophical insight. And this fact will necessarily throw into question the view of philosophy as a system of 'eternal verities.' Indeed, there are elements within any and every philosophical synthesis which are true absolutely, just as there are certain things in science and in theology which transcend the immediate and present state of knowledge in these areas. But to imagine that a particular philosophical synthesis can ever claim the last word, so that no philosophical synthesis is again possible or necessary is to presuppose the end of time and the end in the advance of scientific and theological knowledge. This view of the nature and function of philosophy as a syn­ thesis of science and theology can operate even in philosophies which are expressly anti-scientific, or whose theology is that of an unknowable or even non-existent God. For even a denial of the knowability of God implies a view of God, namely as unknowable. By the same token, the philosopher who implicitly or explicitly denies the existence of God denies the e�istence of a particular conception of God, and in his philosophical system generally sub­ stitutes something else to perform essentially the same metaphysical function, thereby often overloading a particular concept within his philosophy. By way of example one might point to the so-called materialism of the pre-Socratic thinker Democritus. For him nothing (the void) exists just as much as does something (the atoms) 1; otherwise there would be no motion, since there would be no 'place' (the void) into which the atoms might move. But because the void is other than atoms, which are material, it becomes something immaterial or spiritual, and thereby the cause of motion, that is, God. The implication of science within the philosophical perspective is true also for the philosopher of an anti-scientific bent. There is a particular view of science which he rejects; but there is also one which (if he is western) he necessarily accepts, namely an ancient Greek philosophical synthesis between science and theology which has, in the main, given rise to Western civilization as we know it, and in which every child in the West is tutored and educated, whether he is aware of it or not. This work does nor, however, present a compilation of previous philosophical syntheses, as though philosophy were merely the history of philosophy. It is, of course, true that the philosopher stands in a tradition of different historical syntheses which he may,

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of course, ignore; but which seldom ignore him. For this reason a philosopher can be ignorant of his history only at his own peril. The relation of philosophy to its history is totally unlike the relation between any other discipline and its history; for the history of philosophy is always the history of philosophy. 2 And unless the philosopher is aware of prior philosophical syntheses, and the reasons in the scientific and theological views of the age for these, he can be guilty of the simplest of oversights and the most naive of judgments. He may 'solve' a prob!em which has already been solved, or one which philosophical history has indicated to be an insoluble pseudo-problem. But it is exactly because the climate of science and theology differs in each and every age that the phi­ losopher may not rest satisfied with any particular past historical synthesis, or attempt to translate into the present anything more than those elements which are true of every philosophy in any age. There have, of course, been ages in which the connection between science and theology was so close that a philosophical synthesis between the two was really superfluous. This was the case, for example, among the early Greek philosophers, for whom the distinction between science and theology is scarcely perceptible, if it was made at all. But the state of hostilities which came to exist between science and theology in the sixteenth century with the rise of the new physics, and again in the nineteenth century over the question of evolution, often seemed irreconcilable. And possibly it was a philosophy too subservient to theology (ancilla theologiae), and hence too weak to mediate the dispute between the science and the theology of the day that had failed in this regard. Philosophy soon become increasingly unable to serve science. For after philosophy had merely imported scientific method whole­ sale into its own mode of thinking, it rendered impossible a critical view of modern science, and even of itself. Philosophy can be of assistance to science or to theology only if it preserves its indepen­ dence from both. Only if philosophy is independent of science can it offer valid criticism and a critical understanding of the theories, assumptions, methods, and logical procedures of the sciences, indicating to the scientist what he is about, and what the necessary implications and consequences of a particular theory or procedure may be, or the disadvantages of a particular assumption. Similarly, only if philosophy is independent of theology can it provide the intellectual language which the theologian requires in order to elaborate upon the sacred language of revelation. But as the split between science and theology widened after 3

the seventeenth century, and as philosophy became the follower of the methods, rather than the interpreter of the assumptions, of the sciences, and as philosophy more and more lost touch with developments in theology, theologians found that a philosophy too closely wedded to the methodology of the sciences (ancilla scientiae) was unable to provide the sort ,of tool necessary for fruitful theo­ logical work. On the other side, science advanced so quickly that soon philosophers found it difficult to keep up with, much less understand and interpret, the latest work and theories in the sciences. Soon philosophy found itself alienated in its . affections to theology as a result of its relatively short-lived affair with the sciences. It also found itself with an ever narrower field of inquiry and investigation as the rapid and ever more comprehensive reaches of science moved into more and more of the the provinces which philosophy had always considered its own. But although philosophy had largely lost contact with science, science could not lose all contact with philosophy. As E. A. Burtt is certainly correct in pointing out, the sciences of nature have always implied, if they have not actually built up�m a philosophical view of reality as a whole; and he notes the danger to scientists implicit in this procedure: more often than not a philosophy that is held unconsciously is also held uncritically. 3 Every mathematical formulation made to predict what is given physically implies first of all the physical given, and also a specific world view of the physically given. This does not mean that the physicist, for example, is attempting an explanation of reality as a whole; but it does mean that in his quantification of the observed physical data in a formula not only is there a physical residue which can never be lost sight of, but also there is a qualitative aspect to his formulations. Thus in Newton's classic formula for gravitation F = ma, mass is defined quantitatively by its relation to force and acceleration, but there is a necessarily qualitative aspect to the 'concept' of mass as well, namely that of inertia. This is one of the reasons why the formulations of the physical sciences, made for the purposes of scientific prediction, also imply a view and ex­ planation of physical reality. If such were not the case, the very possibility of verification for such formulae would be out of the question; and this would represent a violation of the primary reason for attempting to construct such mathematical models in the first place, namely to predict scientifically in order to gain control over physical nature. This qualitative aspect in any and every scientific formulation must particularly be born in mind in the

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light of the extensive quantification taking place not only in the physical, but now, more and more, in the other sciences as well. 4 The gradual separation of philosophy from science, however, had effects as deleterious to science as to philosophy. This can be sensed in the writings of present-day scientists such as Heisenberg and Schrodinger, who have attempted to explain what they are doing in modern physics, and the peculiar way in which modern physics looks at reality in language more traditional to philosophy than to science. 5 Hence, to gain any rapprochement with the sciences it is necessary to return to the .-beginning of the estrangement be­ tween the two. Since the classical physicist was primarily concerned with the prediction and control of the physical universe, so that where he could not control he might at least be able to predict, it was understandable to imagine that the terms in which physical phenomena could be predicted and controlled must be the way they are. Thus if things could be predicted, understood, controlled, and explained as events occurring in space and time, then things must really be events located in space and time. When things became events fitted into the mesh of Newtonian mechanics, the philosopher's understanding and explanation of the thing as given to the philosopher in ordinary experience or in intellectual abstrac­ tion was no longer meaningful. And yet, as physical science conti­ nued to advance in its penetration of reality to the realms of the sub-atomic, the picture of what a thing actually was became more and more complex until its 'picture' became a set of statistical relationships. The new mesh of Einstein or of Quantum Mechanics, though it provided a means for adequate prediction and control, in one sense, threw the question of the 'ultimate reality' back into the philosophical circle, so that scientists such as Heisenberg began comparing the physicists' concept of energy in terms of Aristotle's 'potency'.6 But the matter was thrown back_ into the lap of the philosophers on another score as well. For the event located in space­ time became less a determinate physical thing and more our structured knowledge of the interrelationships between things. This meant that the important distinction in early modern philosophy between subject and object, basic for classical epistemology, was less and less relevant. It was more and more difficult to distinguish between observer and observed, to separate the elementary particles of reality from our knowledge of them. This may have been one of the principal reasons for the increasing dissatisfaction with the philosophy of Kant, as expressed by modern physicists, as his whole

5

philosophy rested strongly upon the distinction between subject and object. 7 Thus the philosopher and the scientist could no longer afford to evade each other's questions. And although Heidegger may be correct in saying that the abyss (Kluft) between the thinking of philosophy and the procedure of the sciences is unbridgeable, 8 at least from the side of science: possibly it can be bridged from the side of philosophy. And possibly the same absolute separation between philosophy and theology which Heidegger finds between the unconditional character of faith and the problematic of thought, as two fundamentally (abgrundig) different realms, 9 can be brought into relation with philosophy and the synthesis it attempts between science and theology. In this situation philosophy must return to its older and more classical function, namely that of providing a synthesis between science and theology. 10 There is no other discipline or area of study which might possibly make or provide that kind of synthesis or that kind of service to science and theology. This emphasis upon the function of philosophy as a synthesis between science and theology is not in any way to denigrate the importance of the philosophy of science or the value of the study of comparative religions. This latter study, for example, has most certainly provided theology with a deeper understanding of itself and of the human context within which religion, of whatever sort, must necessarily take place. Similarly, the philosophy of science does not sufficiently have the interests of theology at heart; and though comparative religion may make use of scientific procedures and the scientific picture of the world in different cultures, it does not attend enough to the present and projected views of present-day science to bring about the type of philosophical synthesis that is needed. Finally, if religion is essentially the relation between God and man, then the scientific study of the phenomena and the primarily infra-worldly structures manifested by religion does not, and indeed cannot, touch the actual heart of religion, which is not simply the relation of man to some supreme being conceived of as somehow divine, but essentially and fundamentally the relation of God to man. The current interest on the part of philosophers in the philo­ sophy of science, on the one hand, and in the philosophy of religion, on the other, indicates already an implicit awareness of the need to return to an older and more classical view of the function of philo­ sophy in relation to science and theology. However, to feel the need and to effect the necessary synthesis in an age witnessing a

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knowledge explosion, as great in the area of theology as any that has occurred in the sciences are two very different things. It probably should be admitted at the start that a theologico­ philosophical synthesis of the type achieved by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century or by Hegel in the nineteenth century is no longer possible, or perhaps even desirable. A synthesis of this magnitude in theology would, at the present time at least, seem out of the question. Even the preparation for such a synthesis would represent an awesome undertaking. It would involve, first and foremost, an exhaustive and critical study of the sacred scriptures, the church councils, the early fathers of the church, and all this in historical depth, if the evolution of dogma would be seen and appreciated both in its broad sweep and in its wealth of individual detail. With all the recent discoveries in biblical archaeology and the necessary mastery of the languages and cultures of the Near East, the task of understanding the scriptures themselves requires a lifetime of study. Add to this the detailed historical study of the early councils and the church fathers in the light of their historical and philosophical backgrounds, the history and evolution of the different theological schools through the Middle Ages and into modern times, and one is faced with a task of enormous proportions. And this is only the propadeutic. Now would begin the task of synthesis, which requires the assistance of philosophical tools which few theologians can be expected to possess. For example, we probably possess more com­ plete knowledge of the very age in which St. Thomas lived and worked than he did himself. And certainly our knowledge of the Greek and Patristic sources upon which he depends has been broad­ ened beyond measure through the resources of scholarship - the critical editions, source works, translations, even such elementary tools as dictionaries and encyclopedias - which are so easily taken for granted. And when one considers the purely historical knowlege required of any viable philosophical synthesis, and an understanding of the current philosophical tendencies simply in the West - leaving aside for the moment the necessary understanding which philos­ ophy must have of the contribution made to human knowledge by the sciences - the task may appear hopeless rather than merely impossible. If the present state of philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge is such as it has been schematically described above, the reasons for the inadvisability even of attempting a synthesis on the order of an Aquinas or a Hegel may be appreciated. It could be, 7

however, that such a theologico-philosophical synthesis is not even desirable. For if we are correct in judging the nature and function of philosophy in its more classical form, philosophy is meant to provide a synthesis between scie·nce and theology, not between itself and theology. A philosophical synthesis does not imply, nor does it presuppose a complete and professional competence in science or theology. The philosopher need not become a theologian nor a scientist in order to be a philosopher. But it does require an appreciation of the methods, modes of thinking, presuppositions, and data pertinent to these disciplines. History has indicated that when the philos­ opher becomes either a theologian or a scientist, he often loses sight of philosophy, and then he can no longer be of service to theology or to science. His sympathies are too much in the one or the other direction to act as an independent broker between the two. And yet this constant looking toward the sciences and toward theology has a benefit for the philosopher · himself. It keeps him honest. If he becomes too much enamoured of theology, the hard­ mindedness of the scientist is able to remin_d him of the necessity of keeping his feet upon the solid earth of infra-worldly structures as the necessary basis for his speculations. And if he becomes too engrossed in the problems and procedures of science, the theologian is able to remind him that there is existence other than that which is subject to scientific measurement, prediction, and control. This is what is meant by saying that science, on the one hand, and the­ ology, on the other, keep the philosopher 'honest.' And it is by remaining honest in this fashion that the philosopher is able to contribute most, both to theology and to science, by remaining subject to the controls of both in his speculations. Then also is he in a position to effect the synthesis which is his function. Nevertheless, the very fact that his function is to provide a synthesis between theology and science means that it is extremely unlikely that the scientist will be able to re�ognize the scientific world picture in the resultant synthesis, any more than the theo­ logian is likely to find a fully elaborated theology, even in its essentials. It is not possible to read the two poles of the synthesis into the work of synthesis, but only out of it. For this reason the syntheses which the philosopher makes may not be wholly satisfactory either from the point of view of science or from that of theology. It is always possible for the philosopher to misconstrue or misrepresent the problem so that the solution he offers through the vehicle of the synthesis may be either incorrect

8

or trivial. Nevertheless, even in its mistakes and misconceptions the synthesis can offer a valuable guide, if only by indicating where different roads may lead, which ones may or need not be taken or pursued. In an age of rapid and radical change the possibility of error is even more possible. But this fact only indicates that philos­ ophy is not merely an intellectual luxury, which the age with an abundance of leisure is more and more able to afford, it is a benefit and a necessity which the age can no longer afford to do without. ,

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CHAPTER II

BEING

I. THE APPEARANCE OF BEING

Philosophy can only begin with man's knowledge of things. But since, as Heraclitus noted, nature loves to hide, 1 man's knowl­ edge of things depends upon whether those things appear to him or not. The fact that they do not appear to man does not neces­ sarily mean that they do not exist, nor does it even mean that they do not appear. There can be an appearing without someone, for example, man, to whom it appears. For man himself appeared and had to appear before things could appear for him. Furthermore, man could appear only in a world prepared for his appearance, that is, in a world that had already appeared. This does not mean that the philosopher must somehow attempt to follow the historian in his efforts to trace the progress of man further and further back into the annals of the historical past. By the nature of things there will always be a pre-history, if only because history depends primarily upon written records. Nor does it mean that the philosopher must attempt to follow the paleon­ tologist in the search for the oldest bones and artifacts to discover and date the origins of man upon this planet. Purely scientific methods of research may succeed in dating the first appearance of homo sapiens with greater or lesser accuracy, but the interest of the philosopher is only with the fact that at some point in geological time man did appear. Whether this occurred as a result of a long process of evolution is not exactly germane, although it is highly probable that a preparation similar to that proposed by evolutionary theory would be requited. For there had to be a world, an inter­ connected complex of things, into which man might appear ; since man is the kind of being that requires other beings in order for him to continue in his being. This means that there had to be an ap10

pearance of being prior to the appearance of man, and a fortiori prior to appearance /or man. For this reason, Kant's notion of appearance must be broad­ ened. For Kant possible experience is that which is or can be given as appearance. In accordance with Kant's transcendental view it is the 'possibility of experience' which gives objective reality to all our k nowledge. And this experience rests upon the synthetic unity of appearances. 2 However, there is an appearance which had to appear prior even to the possibility of appearance. For things could possibly appear to man only,.,if man had himself first appeared. This appearance had to have occurred, and yet by definition it would be an appearance which could not possibly appear to man, that is, it could not be a possible experience in Kant's sense. The same would be true of the appearance of being prior to man's appearance, without which man himself could not have appeared. The fact that prior to any appearance of being for man, man had to appear; and for man to appear there had to be an appearance of being, is one of the reasons why man's knowledge cannot be total and complete. Being never appears to him completely, if only because both man and being have a long prehistory of appearance prior to any appearance for man. What is at issue here is the ques­ tion of whether appearance is primarily being's or, man's. And the primacy must be given to being, not simply because of the pre­ ponderance in geological time of being's appearance prior to that of man, but also because the appearance of being precedes that of man by an absolute and a priori necessity. Being is not simply that which appears or can appear only to man; rather, being is that without which man could not possibly have made his appearance. But if appearance is primarily being's, such that it might give rise to man's appearance and appear to man, then does not appearance become something real ? In his Transcendental Aesthetic, indeed, Kant speaks of the 'reality of appearances' (Wirklichkeit der Erscheinungen) 3 ; however, Kant is not here referring to the appearance of being, but to the being of appearance. And at this point we must begin to proceed with great caution. Certainly, if we mean by the reality of appearance that the appearance itself is some-thing, then one need but point to illusions and hallucinations to show that although there is here an appearance which, at the time, gives us the impression of solid and tangible reality, it later proves to be not what it appeared to be, but of something else or nothing at all. In other words, the being of appearance, no matter how real it may seem, is not necessarily the 11

appearance of being. This is because there is no appearance of being without some-thing that appears. This is so whether that which appears actually appears the way it is or whether it does not . This means further that there is really no such thing as appearance . Pure appearance is a chimaera. But if there is no such thing as the being of appearance, then the thing that does appear must be sought beyond the being of appearance. This means that the thing must be sought in the direction of the appearance of being. Kant realized this when he insisted that experience necessarily rested upon 'the synthetic unity of appearances. ' Appearances or phenomena had to be received in some differentiated form ; other­ wise science would have no specific obj ect of knowledge to consider. No science could have as its obj ect the study of pure appearance. For the immediate problem would be : appearance of what sort ? The unsynthesized sensory manifold of Kant would be something like William James' 'blooming, buzzing confusion . ' Indeed, this con­ fused muddle of pure appearance might p;rovide the raw material for definite knowledge through a synthesis ; but by itself it repre­ sents no-thing. There is simply no such thing as pure· appearance. In fact, the converse is true : only no-thing appears purely. But although it may be true that a pure appearance, for example, an illusion or a hallu­ cination, may be nothing, still nothing may not thereby be said to appear. Only being appears. The nothingness of nothing appears only in pure appearance, which is not the appearance of being but its total disappearance. But since no-thing does not appear, then the thing must represent simply the appearance of being. Being appears as thing. The thing is not pure appearance exactly because it is the appearance of being. From this one might be inclined to view the thing as that which lies behind appearance or phenomena. This proves incorrect for two r�asons : first of all, the appearance or phenomenon must then itself be a phenomenon ; secondly, the thing and the phenomenon must then be related cause to effect . Regarding the first point, there are no self-subsisting or self-constituting phenomena. All phenomena or appearances depend either upon the appearance of being or the being of appear­ ance ; that is, they are either some being's or some man's. And on the second point , if the thing and its appearance for man were related as cause to effect, then there would have to be a separation of the appearance from the thing that appears. This would, again, represent a pure appearance. There cannot be a phenomenon of appearance, because appearance cannot itself appear. This would be nothingness.

12

It is the thing that appears. The thing represents the appear­ ance of being. Pure appearance implies complete and total appear­ ance, but complete and total appearance is not the appearance of being as a thing, but the 'appearance' of nothing, that is, the thing's disappearance. To appear wholly, completely, and entirely is to disappear. Pure appearance is annihilation. Being does not appear totally, completely, and entirely. Only some-thing of being appears. Or rather, being only appears as some thing. Nature, as Heraclitus suggested, loves to hide itself. It can appear whole, complete, _and entire only in the total dis­ appearance of the thing. But when being appears in disappearance, it is obviously not being that appears, but nothing. But since pure appearance is no-thing, then this means that the thing which appears, representing the appearance of being, must lie beyond appearance, beyond the phenomenal. For if the appearance is not the thing, but rather the appearance of the thing, then the thing could only be that which appears in the appearance of being. There are two ways in which the thing is beyond the phenom­ enal. It is beyond appearance as what it is, namely as something differentiated and differentiatable. In other words, it is beyond the phenomenal essentially. This means that its appearing is always an appearance of some sort. But it is also beyond the phenomenal by the very fact that it is the appearance of some-thing, an appear­ ance of being. In other words, since there is no such thing as pure appearance, the thing must actually exist beyond the phenomenal, which, in its complete appearance, is literally no-thing. This means that the thing lies beyond the phenomenal existentially as well as essentially. It might, of course, be urged that the thing considered as beyond the phenomenal is an essential fashion is simply knowledge, and that this is basically opposed to the thing considered as beyond the phenomenal in an existential fashion, which is simply being or reality. Indeed, although these two ways in which the thing is beyond the phenomenal are different, it would be incorrect to set up a dichotomy between knowledge and reality at the very start of our philosophical inquiry. It is true that knowledge is not reality, or reality knowledge. But to begin our philosophical inquiry with the metaphysical assumption that knowledge is immaterial, the fruit of the res cogitans, and that reality is material, as res extensa, and then attempt to discover how knowledge is possible in a being which is both a thinking thing and an extended thing is to prejudice

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the philosophical project from the start. Presupposed in such a a view - and something very much open to question - is that reality is totally material, with the exception of mind which is totally spiritual or immaterial. But if the thing is beyond the phenomenal, both essentially and existentially, then our knowledge, insofar as it would come into contact with things, must reacli out both essentially and existential­ ly beyond the phenomenal. There is a basic direction and orien­ tation to our knowing. It is beyond the phenomenal and in the direction of things. But it is beyond the phenomenal not in some haphazard or directionless fashion. It is relational, with all that the word relational implies. It relates to things. This means that it is not simply beyond the phenomenal and up to the thing. To be fully relational it must also include the thing, because the thing would represent one of the necessary poles for that relation. The directional relationship beyond the phenomenal, then, is not simply between the phenomenon and tp.e thing. Because being never appears totally, completely, and entirely, the thing, which is the appearance of being, cannot do so either, except in the disappearance of annihilation. This meahs that even in the ap­ pearance of being as a thing there is something that remains hidden. Hence, the directional relation both essentially and existentially beyond the phenomenal stretches not only up to and including the thing, but also beyond it as well. The fact that the relational direction beyond the phenomenal reaches even beyond the thing does not, however, mean that the thing can be made to appear totally, completely, and entirely. Such is the excessive demand of pure phenomenalism, which insists that the thing must appear totally, that is, if we are to know it truly. Such an inappropriate demand can end only in skepticism. In the final analysis it represents an overly 9ptimistic rationalism doomed to disappointment. It holds, in effect, that the phenomenal is the real, and demands that for things to be known as 'truly real' that they must present themselves in pure appearance, reveal themselves wholly, completely, and entirely. And since they cannot be made so to appear, except in their total disappearance (when they can no longer be known as some-thing), pure phenomenalism can end only in a skepticism in which literally no-thing is knowable. One can see a similar fallacy operating in certain procedures of modern science as well. The attempt to discover the 'secrets' of nature or of the thing by breaking it open or tearing it apart - one may recall Sir Francis Bacon's remark that nature should be dis-

14

sected into parts not by abstraction, but materially - produces only the pure appearance of the disappearance of the thing. When the thing is made to 'appear' in this way, it is little wonder that the scientist is left holding a bag of nothing. It may, of course: be true that the thing can be made to appear more and more completely by speeding up its appearance. However, if the thing is to appear more and more completely to man, its appearance must often be slowed down rather than speeded up. But even though the essential and existential relation stretches beyond the phenomenal, not only up to and including the thing but also even beyond it, this 'incfusion' cannot be thought to imply a total comprehension. From the point of view of human knowledge this would necessitate the complete and total appearance of the thing. Thus even though this relation stretches beyond the thing - which it must in order to be fully relational - the thing is not made totally apparent. It is always possible for the point to be mis­ sed, or for the appearance itself to be hidden, exactly because the relational direction beyond the phenomenal stretches beyond the thing. This is evident from the point of view of human knowledge, which can miss the thing in its very search for it; not simply because human knowing may have destroyed it in the process of knowing it through the crude phenomenal procedures of its search, but also because it has gone beyond it, passing it by. It is also evident negatively in the possibility of human knowledge to gain greater and greater inclusiveness and completeness of knowledge while yet failing to comprehend the thing totally, short of causing its disappearance, which, by definition, makes further appearance, as a thing to be known, impossible. The fact of the possibility of a more and more complete knowl­ edge is a further indication that the relational direction beyond the phenomenal is not simply up to and including the thing as presently known, but also extends beyond the thing. For there is a truth about the thing which may yet appear, or be made to appear, even though there already exists a relatively adequate knowledge of the thing. It is for this reason that it is possible to speak of the relational direction as not simply beyond the phenomenal, or up to and including the thing, but even as beyond the thing. This does not mean that the thing is totally comprehended, which could only involve its total appearance, producing not an appearance of being, but of nothing. If such total appearance were possible, then pure phenomenalism would be the only possible philosophy; and because 15

it would know nothing definite, scepticism would be the ultimate philosophical conclusion. It might, of course, seem that Kant accepted the position of pure phenomenalism when he employed the concept of the sensory manifold. However, there is really no such 'thing' as the muddled chaos of the sensory manifold, because it is, at the very least, structured by the forms of s�nsible intuition (space and time) , without which for Kant there would be no phenomena or appearances at all. There is, however, something which does not appear, and that is what Kant calls the 'thing in itself. ' Thus as he says in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, man's knowl­ edge 'has to do only with appearances ; the thing in itself (Ding an sich) must, indeed, be retained as real in itself, but unknown to us. 5 ' It would seem that the thing in itself actually does appear, since Kant speaks of it as the 'correlate of sensibility ; 6 ' yet it does not appear to us. Things in themselves, he insists, are always real ; for apart from our understanding of them they ·would conform to laws of their own. 7 Yet, they are not known in themselves for what they are : what is presented is the appearance ·of 'who knows of what unknown object. 8 ' Kant's position regarding the thing in itself may seem ambig­ uous. These 'objects' are noumenal, and they are phenomenal only to the extent that they are the correlate to human sensibility. Nevertheless, this noumenal correlate to sensibility has two aspects to it, a negative and a positive one. Taken positively, the noumenal, though it must certainly be thought to exist, can be grasped only by a being possessed of an intuition of a very special sort not given to man, that is, a non-sensible or intellectual intuition as possessed by God. 9 Taken negatively, however, noumena represents a limit set to the possibility of human knowing in general. Human knowing is limited to what can be given in sensible int'uition. The seemingly anomalous position which Kant took regarding the 'thing in itself' as appearing in sensibility, and yet as not appearing for me as what it is in itself, contains the fundamental truth that the thing does not appear wholly, completely, and entirely. It appears totally only in its disappearance. But if the relational direction extends not only up to and in­ cluding the thing, but ..beyond it, then one might j ustly ask, what might possibly lie beyond ? Let us call it, with Kant, the noumenal. As we have noted, there are two ways in which the thing is beyond the phenomenal, namely essentially and existentially. That

16

the thing is beyond the phenomenal in an essential fashion is clear from the possibility of increased and deepened knowledge about the thing. But before this new knowledge came to be, therr was in that area only ignorance. Hence, from an essential point of view the noumenal is simply ignorance. This is not simply an unknown which may somehow become known in the future; it is also an unknown which may be known to be unknown, and, barring the total appearance of disappearance, possibly even unknowable in the present circumstances of things. The essential relation both beyond the phenomenal, and even , beyond what may be called an adequate knowledge of the thing, extends beyond the thing and in the direction of . . . ignorance. This is not entirely out of keeping with the meaning attached to the word by Kant. For the noumenon was that which could not be known. It could, however, be thought as something known to be unknown, i.e. , the awareness of the fact of necessary igno­ rance. 10 From this we may describe a man's knowledge of a particular thing as an essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. Man's knowledge may be said to lie between that which appears and that which does not (possibly even cannot) appear. It lies beyond the phenomenal and beyond the thing as well. It extends itself in the direction of its own ignorance, the noumenally essential. But this it never reaches, because of the impossibility of total, complete, and entire appearance, which would represent disappearance, and hence the impossibility of further knowledge. Just as the thing is beyond the phenomenal in an essential fashion, so also is it beyond the phenomenal in an existential fashion. But since the thing is fully relational, again the direction of that relation extends not only up to and including the thing, but beyond it as well. How could the thing as existent possibly extend beyond itself ? When one recalls that the thing can never appear totally, short of its disappearance or annihilation, it may be possible to see why the existential relation existing between the phenomenal pole of the thing and the thing must extend even beyond the thing. For this disappearance or annihilation always remains a possibility, a very real possibility, for the appearing thing. This is the possj­ bility of the thing to unrelate itself to its surroundings, bringing about the total appearance of disappearance. It is in this sense that we may speak of the thing as stretching existentially beyond the phenomenal, even beyond the thing itself and in the direction of the noumenal, which is, existentially, nothing.

17

The thing is, then, both an essential and an existential relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal. However, already at this point certain anomalies begin to manifest themselves. It is interestmg, in the first place, to note that the pure appearance of the essentially phenomenal becomes coter­ minous with the existential noumenon of nothing. Similarly, the known unknown (or presently unknowable) of the essentially noumenal is coterminous with the pure becoming of the phenome­ nally existential. This latter correlation, it may be noted, was drawn already by Parmenides who saw the intimate connection between becoming and appearing in the world-view of the· morals. 1 1 In neither case does one have anything definite. To understand the significance of this convergence it will be necessary to consider what may be called the 'poles' which con­ stitute both essential and existential relations of the thing, namely the phenomenal and the noumenal. These poles would appear to set limits not simply to our knowledge of t}:lings, but to the things themselves. The thing is, after all, an essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. The question of immediate interest is, then, the character of these poles. We know beyond the essentially phenomenal, and things exist beyond the existentially phenomenal. We do not know the essentially noumenal, nor do things exist beyond the existentially noumenal. Beyond the phenomenal there is truth and being ; beyond the noumenal there is only ignorance and nothing. But how real are these poles of the phenomenal and the noume­ nal ? They would seem to constitute the relation that is the thing, a relation between what appears and what does not appear. But how real are they ? For, as we have seen, the pure appearance of the phenomenal pole of the essential seems to be coterminous with the noumenal pole of the existential. Pure app�arance is simply dis­ appearance. In the same way the phenomenal pole of the existential is coterminous with the noumenally essential. Pure becoming represents a known unknown. But how real are these poles ? How may they be said to set the thing as known and as existing within firm limits ? Let us take first the poles of the essential relation. These are the poles of human knowing, and immediately we find that they cannot themselves be known. Though we may know through the phenomenal, and although we may know of the noumenal (as a known unknown), these two poles are not themselves known. The phenomenal pole of the essential is that which appears : but pure

18

appearance, as we have argued, is no-thing that could possibly appear. At most the phenomenal pole represents the appearance of some-thing that does appear. There are, of course, pure phenom­ ena which may seem very real, for example, hallucinations, illusions, or dreams at the time; but they are of nothing real, as is soon discovered when they disappear in the pure appearance of the becoming of the existentially noumenal. The pure appearance character of dreams is revealed in its 'reality' in the cold light of early morning as nothing. The essentially phenomena�� is ncJt, from the point of view of possible human knowledge, a real pole. It is impossible to know pure phenomena. We can know only through it or beyond it. \:Ve come to recognize its 'existence' only negatively, in the pure negation of its disappearance. But neither can the noumenally essential be set up as a genuine 'pole' of the thing. From the point of view of human knowledge the noumenally essential is ignorance, which is by definition unknown. And even when it is known to the extent that it is a known unknown, it still remains outside of any and every possible essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. A similar anomally obtains in the poles of the existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. It is clear that the noumenal pole of the existential is not and cannot be real in any existential sense, since it is by definition nothing. The only ex­ ception to this would be in the case of a fact or a deed or an event which presented itself phenomenally - in the sense that one might witness existentially its origin ex nihilo , so to speak - but only essentially. In any case, the reality of the existentially noumenal pole would not thereby be revealed existentially. The same would be the case of the phenomenally existential pole which as pure becoming, constantly becomes what it is not, and ceases to be what it is. Becoming might be said to 'exist' only if being were to become something or if there were actually some­ thing that was becoming, in which case, of course, there would be no such thing as pure becoming. In other words, the phenomenal and noumenal poles of the existential relation do not appear existentially, any more than the phenomenal and noumenal poles of the essential appear essentially. From this denial of the reality of the two poles, whether taken essentially or existentially, it might appear as though we leave the thing without any supports. It represents a free-floating relation, with no poles even to establish that relation. The thing disappears in a puff of metaphysical smoke.

19

However, the fact that the existential poles of the phenomenal and the noumenal fall away from the thing, when taken existentially, also explains how it was possible for the Greeks to understand the being of things as independent aNd 'self-standing, ' not requiring any outside cause. As may be seen, however, such a view of the matter is not free from question. For, as has been indicated, to attempt to establish the existenfial limits of the thing or the finitude of being solely from the side of existence proves a very difficult task. Similarly, the fact that the poles of the essential relation are not known essentially should not come as any surprise. After all, to establish the limits of human knowledge by means of human knowledge - which would imply a knowledge of both sides of that limit - remains equally questionable philosophically, even though it has been variously attempted in the course of modern philosophy. Curiously, the essential poles of phenomenon and noumenon can be established only existentially ; and the existential poles of phenomenon and noumenon, only essentially. They are, then, real or known, but not through and by themselves. Thus the pure appearance of the essentially phenomenal pole is known onJy existentially, that is, when the hallucination or dream is revealed as unreal, no matter how 'true' it may have seemed. This is the case also of the ignorance of the essentially noumenal pole which can be known to have existed - and in the case of a known unknown still to exist - because of the factor of existence. There is, after all, deepening of human knowledge only by existential contact. Only in this way, as we shall see in greater detail in the next section, can the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon push back the boundaries of human knowledge. The case is the same with the existential poles of the phenom­ enal and the noumenal. They cannot be experienced existentially because the noumenal pole is simply nothing;, and the phenomenal pole is but a pure becoming whose existence and non-existence are so interchangeable that there is nothing determinate to experience. These poles can, however, be known essentially in the sense that the limits of the being between becoming and total disappearance can be ascertained in an essential fashion. Thus although the phenomenal and the noumenal poles of the essential remain outside the framework of the essential as such, they can be experien�ed existentially. Similarly, although the phenomenal and noumenal poles of the existential necessarily remain outside the framework of the existential as such, they can be known essentially. The relational poles of the phenomenal and 20

the noumenal, taken both essentially and existentially, are, then, real and true. They are there, even though they are not 'there' for the • structures and functions of which they are the poles. Nonetheless, it is this curious and seemingly paradoxical situ­ ation which renders possible the union of truth and being, and hence the whole process and activity of the human knowing of reality. It also provides an insight into the peculiar sort of being that is man's, as one that is able to know and to experience, and to become aware that it is he that does so. 2 . ADEQ UATE A N D COMPLETI N G KNOWLEDGE OF THE THING

Something which is adequate is sufficient for all practical intents and purposes. Humanly adequate knowledge, then, is knowledge that makes it possible for man to adapt himself to the world of nature within which he lives and must live. But because of the proj ective character of the human understanding, man's stand among things (the original meaning of understanding) can also be proj ected into the future, so that fashioning a world to adapt the world of nature for him, and even in his absence, man can devote his time and energy to other pursuits. But although man's knowledge of things is cl,dequate for most of his practical intents and purposes, there are times when the inadequacy of his knowledge is brought home to him, even on a practical level; for example, when one of the elements in the world he has built up to adapt the world of nature for him begins to wear thin or break down. Adequacy means sufficiency, sometimes bare sufficiency. It does not necessarily imply completeness, no matter how successfully the proj ective and predictive capacity of the human understanding may operate. For what is adequate or sufficient is also from other possible points of view and in diffefent circumstances and situations inadequate and insufficient. What may be adequate know ledge for a man -in one set of circumstances may be decidedly inadequate for the same man in a different set of circumstances. Similarly, what may represent adequate knowledge for one man may not represent adequate knowledge for another. This is the kernel of truth in relativism. Thus, for example, successful prediction represents adequate knowledge for the scientist. Only this provides him with that measure of control over physical reality which will enable him to fashion a world of scientific tools and instruments necessary to adapt the world of nature to man and for man. Thus when a

21

particular scientific theory fails to predict accurately, the theory is revealed as inadequate. This means that even while it was 'ade­ quate,' it was really inadequate. It was merely the case that no particular facts or data had yet arcisen to call that 'adequacy' into question. But when such contravening facts and data do obtain, then the prior theory must be replaced by another, or included within a larger theory which · through successful prediction will provide, at least, that measure of control over physical reality which successful prediction is able to give. The fundamental inadequacy of human knowing is indicated, of course, by the fact that man dies. For no matter how successfully he may adapt himself to the world of nature, or no matter how successfully he may pre-adapt a world of tools and institutions to adapt the world of nature to him and for him, he still dies. In fact, man cannot even gain that measure of control over his physical demise which successful prediction of time and place might provide. Man's adaptive and pre-adaptive knowledg�, the knowledge of his under-standing stand among things is only adequate, which means that it is also inadequate. The fact that human knowledge can come to be recognized as indequate points to the necessity of human learning. Man's knowl­ edge can be completed, filled out, and extended, which is what is meant by learning. This is true both of the particular thing and also of a broader area or field of study, though the basis for these two types of knowledge is very different. For example, this growing and deepening contact with a particular field of endeavor is what produces experience. Experience is gained primarily through exis­ tential contact, through prolonged contact with a particular dis­ cipline or area of study and matters related to it. It is thus that we speak of a person as having broad teaching or business experience. But although there are seemingly no l,imits to the amount which can be known about a particular area or discipline, both in broad outline and in detail, there do appear to be limits to the knowledge which we can possess regarding the individual thing. And since our knowledge of the matters related in a specific dis­ cipline depend upon our existential contact with those individual things themselves, one might argue that there is at least this theoretical limit to human knowledge of a particular area of study. Kant called this limit the 'thing in itself.' It was the limit to the possibility of experience, and hence to human knowledge. The particular, individual thing as it is in itself remains and must remain, for Kant, a surd to possible human knowledge. But it did

22

not take long for Fichte to realize that it is impossible to know anything as a limit to possible human knowledge, unless one knows both sides of that limit. And once both sides of the limiLbecome known, the limit is no longer a limit to human knowledge. What Fichte had seen was that it is impossible to set limits to human knowledge by means of human knowledge. The limits of human knowledge are set, as we have argued in the previous section, not by the essential relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal but by the existential. Thus human knowledge is l�mited, but those limits cannot be shown by essential human knowledge. The inadequacy of human knowledge is not, then, something that can be proved or demon­ strated ; it can only be experienced. It is through experience that we discover more and more even about that small area of human knowledge within which we may claim competence. And this is true of the particular and individual thing as well. It is impossible to know exactly how much we can know about a particular thing. But we realize through experience that no matter how much existential contact we have with a particular thing or with a person, we are always able to discover more. Yet, there remain existential limits to this possible knowledge. If we make the thing or even the particular kind of thing wholly transparent, so, that it appears wholly, completely, and entirely, any further completing knowledge of the thing becomes impossible. Adequate human knowledge has to do primarily with the essential relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal. Without this basic understanding of what is essentially at issue in the thing, all the existential contact in the world will accomplish little. This essentially adequate knowledge is at the basis of all science. In speaking of the essential relation between the phenom­ enal and the nounenal we must, however, be very careful to dis­ tinguish between an essentially adequate knowledge of what the particular thing is (essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, singular), and the essentially adequate knowledge of it as a certain kind of thing (essential relation between phenomena and noumena, plural) . The difference between these two essential relations can be easily seen in the way that science is able to treat of certain kinds of things, for example, dinosaurs and rocket ships to Mars, which do not actually exist, and hence do not represent an essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. There is no single existential instance of an actually existing dinosaur which can be brought forward for immediate scientific study and analysis.

23

And yet by a process of scientific reconstruction, with the help of extant bones and biological theory, it is possible for the scientist to say a great deal about this class of beings that once existed. Never­ theless, he is able to do this only because there once were dinosaurs. Or he is able to say a great deal about a possible rocket ship to Mars because he knows something about the type of ship and the trajectory necessary to hit the 'planet. And thus through the power of his projective understanding he is able to envision and plan the construction of such a rocket ship and plot its necessary course. In other words, knowledge of the kinds of things that do not exist depends upon knowledge of the individual things that do. Even the purely logical concept or class of hippogriff depends, at least to some extent, upon things which actually do exist, such as horses, lions, and eagles. The failure to make this distinction between our knowledge of certain things and our knowledge of certain kinds of things is not without consequences. There is a particularly great danger in a society so widely geared to science and technology to ignore the particular and individual in favor of treating things more 'scien­ tifically,' i.e., in terms of concepts and classes. It is a pure pure essence thinking of this sort which, though essential to the sciences, can, when it is applied to man and to human affairs, lead to the depersonalization and dehumanization of man, carefully explored and justly deplored by the existentialists. It can lead to the destruction of all poetry and all poetic insight, essential for the genuinely human inhabitation of man upon this planet. But even from a purely technological point of view it can lead to the shameful waste and destruction of a world of nature which man ever requires even for the construction and implementation of that world which man creates to adapt the world of nature to him and for him. Spinoza insisted that knowledge of the p�rticular thing was the highest kind of knowledge. He called it 'intuitive science,' which, looking at things under something of the aspect of eternity (sub quadam aeternitatis specie), looks at things in' their unique individ­ uality.1 This unique individuality of the thing is not taken into account by the scientist, as scientist, since his primary aim is that of successful prediction, classification, and thereby control over reality. Yet, it must be insisted that the successful prediction and classification of the scientist depends upon the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, which, in its turn, depends upon the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. Hence even though the scientist is not primarily interested either in the

24

particular thing itself or in its actual existence or non-existence both the particular thing and some actual past or possibly futur; relation to existence is of necessity presumed and presupposed. It is, of course, true that when we ask the question 'what something is,' we point in the direction of an essential relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal. However, 'what some­ thing is' can be taken not only in the general sense which will include others of the same general type, but also in the particular sense of the thing's own unique individuality. Thus increasing familiarity with a particular pe�;;on ar even a certain obj ect or tool can lead us, through continued existential contact, to a deeper knowledge of that particular person or thing. This essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, though it depends upon existential contact, is not a penetration of the unique existence of the particular thing, nor is it a knowledge of a logical class or type, even though it may lead to a deepening of this latter knowledge as well. And it cannot ever go so far as to know the particular thing totally divorced from the aspect of duration, seen insofar as it is in God (in Deo) , that is, insofar as it follows from the eternal necessity of God's nature, as in the philosophy of Spinoza. 2 Human knowledge of the individual particular, or the thing as it is in itseH, is never perfect, and is necessarily subject to the limits imposed upon it by the existential, as has been seen above. Total knowledge of any particular thing implies an appearance whole, complete, and entire ; and this would represent only disappearance, after which the ap­ pearance necessary for such completing knowledge would no longer be possible. It should be clear, then, that the completing of human knowl­ edge of a certain kind of thing does not simply have to do with the existential relation of continued and continuing contact, but also with the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, with the deepened knowledge of and familiarity with particular things. The completing of human knowledge touches the essential at the particular and individual level as well, such that our knowl­ edge of the particular person or thing as identical with itself in all that has been made of it, whether by itself or by others, is also deepened, increased, and completed. This is why, for example, the scientist, or for that matter any artisan, must familiarize himself thoroughly with the particular tools or instruments that he uses in his work. This is particularly the case with instruments of measurement and perception which extend man's own powers of measurement and perception. He must know thoroughly the potentialities and limits of these instrun:i ents. 25

In any consideration of kinds of things, or of logical classes and types, it must be remembered that things are not of a certain sort because they fall into certain logical classes. Rather, men are able to make up logical classes and sets, scientific classifications and groupings, because there are things which are of the same sort or type. It is because certain things have the same essential relation between phenomenon and nounienon that logical classes can be set up and nature manipulated in accordance with successful scientific prediction, in terms of the essential relation between phenomena and noumena. After all, there must be things, the essential and existential relations between phenomenon and nournenon, before there can be the scientific understanding and projection of those things. Thinking of this sort, which might be characterized as 'essence thinking, ' acts at the fundamental basis of all science. And because of its unifying and simplifying character, it is able to attain an ever more comprehensive picture of, and hence control over, physical reality. It is able to reach out and cover the globe, reaching even far beyond it. In this process of simplification the essence thinking of the sciences abstracts from the individual particular and from the existential. For this reason the existentialists charge that the 'simplifying' essence thinking of the sciences distorts and falsifies reality. Indeed, if essence thinking, such as it is employed by the scien­ tist, had merely to do with the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, then the existentialist objection would be entirely valid. But this would be a totally abstract, absolutely theoretical science, with no relation whatsoever to the data of observation or experiment. And though this has at times been the error of some 'natural philosophers,' it is extremely doubtful that it has ever at any time been the program of the scientist, nq matter how 'pure' or 'theoretical' his science may be. As has been seen, the scientist always depends upon a deepening knowledge of particular things, which to that extent always implies the existential. The view that essence thinking represents a distortion or falsification of man's knowledge of things depends, to a certain extent, upon an assumption which must be exposed as frankly Cartesian. For if the thing is 'material' (extended) and the mind is 'spiritual' (non-extended and hence non-material) , then some abstraction, reduction, or transformation must occur in what is known so that the material thing may be 'spiritualized' to be proper food for the immaterial mind. There are, of course, two 26

radical solutions to this 'problem' of getting the non-spiritual thing into the spiritual mind, or of getting the immaterial mind to the material thing. One of these might be called the materialist splution, which interprets the knowing mind as a material brain. This immediately obviates the problem. The other is what may be called the idealist solution, which tends to spiritualize reality so that it can easily be penetrated by a spiritual mind. Both solutions to the problem presuppose the problem. It must first be questioned whether the material thing is purely and simply material in th� materialist sense. On this score one might legitimately argue that the concept of matter is itself a spiritual concept. But one may also question whether the mind, or that by which man knows is purely spiritual in the idealist sense. For, after all, it is man that knows, not simply his mind. In at­ tacking the problem at this point one is in a position to question the dichotomy set up between the material object and the spiritual subject, and thus render the whole question of distortion, at least on this basis, questionable. There is undoubtedly an element of distortion and falsification in human knowing. There are, after all, illusions and errors of perception. However, man can adapt himself in an adequate fashion and make compensations in his normal and everyday actions for these factors in his life of kpowing. Human knowing can easily and quickly adapt and pre-adapt itself to its own insufficiencies and limitations in various ways. Scientific thinking does not distort or falsify man's knowledge of the real so much as it simplifies and unifies it, making possible a more adequate prediction and control over reality. True knowledge of reality is falsified only if the scientist comes to believe that the way in which he is in an adequate fashion able to treat the world is the way it actually is. There is a distortion of man's knowledge of reality only if the scientific models and theories of reality which enable the scientist to predict and control that reality are mistaken for the reality itself. This is the thrust of \Vittgenstein's discussion about the mesh in the Tractatus. Different scientific meshes (theories or models) covering the facts represent adequate, or less than adequate, means of providing successful prediction and clas­ sification for the facts; they do not mean that any one mesh is 'truer' than the other. The most that it tells us is the precise way in which it is possible to describe reality by these means. 3 It is, then, somewhat inaccurate to speak of essence thinking as distorting, falsifying, or doing violence to reality. Violence can be done to the knowledge of reality only when the adequate knowl-

27

edge which we may have of the essential relations between phenom­ ena and noumena is believed to be the way things are. There is, of course, another way in which scientific procedures are able to do actual violence to reality. And this; is by violating it in the attempt to tear things open and break them apart in order to get at their 'secrets.' But as we have indicated, things cannot be made to appear in their disappearance ; and in any case this is not the result of scientific or essence thinking, but of the sometimes crude in­ struments of scientific practice and research.

3.

THE ESSENTIAL AN D BEING

At this point the task of the metaphysician might seem clear : his job is to catalog reality in accordance with the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, so as to provide an intellectual justification for the work of the scientist and thus the basis for Western civilization as such. The task of me_taphysics is to establish a thoroughly scientific metaphysics, though possibly with a bow in the direction of theology in accordance with the program set for philosophy in the introduction. It is, of course, true that science is always in possession of adequate knowledge. It is equally true that this adequate knowl­ edge represents the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, which, in turn, is based upon the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. Hence, it might appear that the philosopher would be of most assistance to the scientist if he were to provide the scientist with a fundamental table of categories covering the essential. Scientific theory could then build and oper­ ate upon this basis. Aside from the fact that science outgrows the tables of categories and classifications drawn up for it by philosoppers almost as quickly as the most recent set has gone to press, there would be at least one very good philosophical reason why such a pursuit would be useless for metaphysics. For if the metaphysician is primarily interested in the existential, in being, then the question must arise whether or not the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, upon which all categories and classifications might be founded intellectually, in fact, exists. If we mean by 'exist' that there are such 'things' as essenc�s, the answer must, of course, be.no. Other­ wise these essences would then be things that existed, and would have essences ; the essences of those existing things would also have essences, and so on ad infinitum; and the metaphysician would be 28

transported off into the Platonic world of an infinity of ideas. However, not only is there a question of the existence of essences, taken in this sense, but also there is also a question,.of their knowability. For it may justly be argued that since the phenomenal and noumenal poles of the essential cannot be known by that of which they are the poles, the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon would have to remain unknowable. But though it may be correct to say that the essential cannot be known essentially (which would, indeed, imply the total appearance of the thing) , the thing, which is an existential as w�ll as �n essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, can be known essentially. The ability to know the thing essentially is not, however, groundless, nor is the essential thereby nothing. As we have seen, the essential relation between phenomena and noumena (that is, knowing a thing essentially), must always be based upon the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. For if there are not certain things, then the scientific treatment of things as certain kinds of things would be impossible. There is, after all, no science that treats expressly of chimeras or hippogriffs. This is one of the principal reasons why the scientist stays as close as he possibly can to observation and experiment; and for theories as yet un­ verified, seeks verification. Scientific speculations which escape this necessary relation to fact and venture off into the world of pure ideas are quickly suspect in science, no matter how correct they may later be proved to be for other and more specifically scientific reasons. Such pure speculation is no less suspect in metaphysics, but for different reason. For to imagine metaphysics simply as the a generalized analysis of the essential relation between phenomena and noumena may make metaphysics scientific, but it does so at the price of dragging it away from the particular and the individual, and also of making being or existence merely a generalized essential relation between phenomena and noumeiia. It reduces the ultimate question of metaphysics to the question 'What does it mean to be a what ? ' This would be to take the existential as but another characteristic or quality which, unlike most other characteristics and qualities possessed by things that exist, is possessed by all of them generally. This would generate the notion of the existential as a totality, as a logical class of all classes. Kant was entirely correct when he said that being is not a real predicate, that it is not a concept of something which could add anything to the concept of a thing. 4 Being, taken as a concept, 29

is empty. It is, as Hegel later argues, indistinguishable from nothing because it has the same vague immediacy, and it is equally in­ determinate.5 However, it is true that being is empty and totally indeterminate, as Kant and Hegel say, only if it is treated as a concept. Though this fact would only indicate that being cannot or should not be taken as a concept. For if being is turned info a concept or if the existential i s turned into the essential, thereby producing a thoroughly 'scientific metaphysics, ' it is necessary for metaphysics to dispense with three things : 1) it must neglect the particular and the individual, with which it must indeed begin ; 2) it must forget that at least one instance of the existential is required in order to turn the existential into the essential ; and 3) it must ignore the element of existential contact, necessary for the existential to be essentialized in the first place. The attempt to produce a thoroughly scientific metaphysics also ignores the fundamental difference b�tween the purposes of science and that of metaphysics. The task of the philosopher is not to change the world, but to interpret it. Whereas the essence thinking of science seeks primarily the prediction and control over physical reality necessary to fashion a world of instruments and institutions to pre-adapt the world of nature to and for man. By the same token, for metaphysics the essential relation between phenomena and noumena is not of special interest to the metaphysician, except as a means of contrasting his aims and purposes. In the first place, the essential relation between phenom­ ena and noumena need have no direct relation to the existential. The concept or idea may have no relationship to anything actually existing. Similarly, a false concept or idea in no way determines what the thing may actually be. It is the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon which constit4tes the limits of the existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon (the being of the particular thing), not the essential relation between phenom­ ena and noumena ; this latter represents no mote than our essentially adequate (and hence often inadequate) knowledge of the thing as a certain kind of thing. And even this latter can arise, ultimately, only from the former. To treat being as an essential relation between phenomena and noumena, that is, .- as a concept, is to reduce it to the status of a totally empty, logical class, such as 'griffinness. ' Or it is to reduce it to a class of all classes which, because it includes all things that exist, would make that class totally full and totally indeterminate,

30

as Hegel rightly saw. For although the class of canines is determin­ able as a separate class by the class of non-canines, being, as the class of all things existing, could be determined only by the neces­ sarily and absolutely null class of non-being, which by definition does not have the possibility of determining anything, since it absolutely does not exist. If being is taken as a concept and as the class of all classes it becomes both totally full, since it would contain absolutely everything in pure undeterminateness, and it also becomes absolutely empty, since it is impossible to differentiate it from the pure indeterminacy of nothingness. ..Being and non-being, taken abstractly, have the same conceptual content, nothing. Similarly, if being is made over into a concept, it becomes impossible to distinguish between things ; for each and every thing that exists, exists just as much as does anything else. If being is taken as an essential relation between phenomena and noumena, then it becomes impossible for us to recognize the particular as an individual existent, as an existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon limited by the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. In other words, being or the existential cannot receive a wholly scientific treatment. It is not a concept which can be manipulated by the categories of logic. And although scientific thinking relies heavily upon essence or conceptual thinking, even science cannot operate without any relation to the appearance of being as a thing. This means that even in its normal mode of operation the basis of science is metaphysical. And this renders the demand that meta­ physics be scientific even more dubious ; for then the science upon which metaphysics would have to be based would itself be without basis. Kant has indicated, albeit in an indirect fashion, that a fully scientific metaphysics is, if not impossible, at least improbable. It is sometimes said that by 'science' Kant, of course, understood geometry and Newtonian mechanics. - And thus there might be some sense in which metaphysics could be scientific. But what Kant is saying, in effect, is that if the essential relations between phenom­ ena and noumena, the categories necessary to interpret and provide the necessary intellectual underpinnings to science, are applied to the matter of metaphysics, then metaphysics is not possible as science. And on this score Kant is surely correct. It is impossible to know or experience human freedom, the soul, God, or being in the same way we know or experience the truth of Newton's laws laws of gravitation, the truth of the theorems of Euclid, or the truth that

31

this is an oaken table. Metaphysics may, indeed, fail to be scientific in this sense, but this may not be a fault in metaphysics. In Kant's philosophy matters such as God, freedom, and the human soul, traditionally treated hy metaphysics, are relegated by the speculative reason to the realm of ideas. They have, and can have, no relation to possible experience. They may be given an existential basis only through �their postulation by the practical reason, which requires such concepts of pure reason as a necessary basis for ethics. But it is interesting to note that although being is also merely an idea of pure reason, an empty idea, not a real predi­ cate - for from a conceptual point of view a hundred real Thalers contain no more coin than a hundred possible Thalers6 - it is not one of the ideas which receives a postulated existence by practical reason. In this one may sense what Heidegger, with good reason, calls the 'forgetting of being.' Kant's philosophy is itself ample demonstration that if we attempt to treat being as a concept, then metaphysics is impossible. For the existential cannot be reduced to an essential relation between phenomena and noumena. If it could be, it would be at least theoretically possible to set down a certain number of metaphysical formulae, which would gain the agreement of all metaphysicians throughout the world in the same way that all physicists readily give assent to Newton's formulae for gravitation. There are no magic formulae in metaphysics, and there are very good philo­ sophical reasons why there cannot be. For contrary to the view commonly held, the metaphysician does not deal with abstract and abstruse ideas, but with something so real, namely existence or being, that without it the various things that are accounted real and concrete would not be. Even the imagined practicality of the scien­ tist depends upon a more abstract view of reality than that of the metaphysician. His praxis and modes of thought depend upon the essential relations between phenomena and noumena, not upon the particular thing as an essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. Indeed, the essential relations be­ tween phenomena and noumena have their origin and effect upon the individual thing, otherwise the scientific theories and hypotheses which he formulates would not really be practical at all; that is, they would not deal with pragmata, with things. Still, these individual things as indjvidual are not the primary concern of the nature of his 'practicality,' but things treated as kinds of things. Being is not an essence or a concept, nor can it legitimately be reduced to one. Not only this, being does not even have an essence.

32

If it did, it would be possible to define being and deal with it con­ ceptually and logically. And the problems of metaphysics would be over. However, the existence of the oaken table upon which) write cannot be ' reduced' from the table ; it is the table's. In order to deal with being as an essential relation between phenomena and noumena it would have to be given in appearance as a particular essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon; that is, it would have to be given as a thing is given. And as Kant rightly saw, being is not given within the space-time forms of sensible intuition. No matter how real it must· necessarily be for anything to be given at all, being is not itself something given. One can see, touch, or smell the oaken table ; but it is not possible to see, touch, or smell the existence of that table. The being of the thing, which is so absolutely necessary for the very thing's being at all sensible, is not itself directly sensed, nor can it be. I can pet the dog, not the existence of the dog. I can hear the dog barking ; I cannot hear the existence of the barking dog. It is impossible to see, smell, taste, touch, or hear existence or being, but only existents and beings. Only something of being is given ; or rather, being is given only as something. Insofar as things appear, something of being appears ; but being does not appear except in the guise of things. And, as Heraclitus noted, sometimes that guise is a disguise. For bein g loves to hide itself. Thus the possibility of reducing being by some sort of abstrac­ tion or intellectual refinement to the level of the essential is ruled out from the start. Our awareness of being is not the awareness of something given sensibly or of something given conceptually ; for it would first have to be given sensibly in some way, shape, or form before it could be given conceptually. Our awareness of being is the awareness of 'something' which must be ; because without it nothing would be. Metaphysics may not, then, be reduced to a purely conceptual subjectivism or to a relativism which is the mere spinning of a web of complex, but interconnected ideas. Being is trans-subjective. Among other things this means that not only is there more to being than what is grasped by any one philosopher, there is even more to being than is contained in the sum total of all the human philos­ ophies of being. One reason for this is that the history of human thinking about being is by no means complete. For not only is there the being that is, or the being that was ; there is also the being that will be. But even in relation to the being that is, being is never equal to the sum of all beings which actually exist here and now.

33

In metaphysics the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts. Metaphysics does not follow .the laws of arithmetic or logic. For being is a relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal, which means that being is not merely , the sum total of existing beings, but also the relationships and interrelationships between them. But there is an even more fundamental reason why being cannot be treated essentially br conceptually, and this reason lies within man himself. Man, the being that considers being and does metaphysics, is himself a being with existence . This means that man is, from the point of view of his existence, a being whose being is transubjective to himself. At first sight this might seem to make every consideration of being impossible or totally subj ectivistic. Rather, it is this curious fact of the transubjectivity of man to his own being (because he is also a being), which, though it makes man's own being transubjective to himself as a subj ect, also makes man open to being and being open to man. Being is open to man in the sense that something of being is given to man in the appear­ ance of being. And man is open to being because he is transubj ective to his own subjectivity. This does not, of course, destroy the sub­ j ectivity of man, nor does it reduce to· nothing the necessarily subjective and relative elements necessarily involved in any meta­ physical undertaking, but it does indicate how impossible a purely conceptual and subjectivistic metaphysics of the essential relation between phenomena and noumena must necessarily be. This is the reason why metaphysics attains a character peculiar to any other scientific endeavor or way of thinking. For not only is the being which man attempts to understand transubj ective to man as a subject, but man is also a being ; and hence is even tran­ subjective to himself. What would otherwise be a paradoxical anomaly is that which grounds the possibility of man 1 s openness to being and being's openness to man. Being is open to man because it appears and appears to him, because he is ' himself a being with a being transubjective to himself as a subj ect . From this one may see not only how an absolute transcendental idealism is possible, but also the error of such a metaphysics. Man can imagine that because being and his own being is transubjective to himself as a subject, he can take that position of subjectivity as a pure position, and extrapolate a metaphysics independent of existence, even of his own existence. Nevertheless, any metaphysics which would attempt to proceed from the relation of the self to itself or to its own entirely self-constituted world has a more funda­ mental problem to overcome. This is not because it is theoretically 34

impossible to grasp the meaning of being from a single instance thereof - though this could hardly occur in the kind of world in which man lives - it is rather because the so-called relation of self-identity, the relation of the self to itself, is not actually a relationship at all. Something besides the self-identical subject is required for man to realize even his own transubj ectivity. And further, in such a situation being could only become a 'what' defined solely, and aprioristically by the self, with no relation to anything other than the self, whose very selfhood as something real would be open to question. ,,, 4.

THING AND BEING

The Greek word for being is To ov. But as a verbal noun it retains a two-sided ambiguity, so that it can mean either a being or simply being. The ambiguity of the word has been pointed out by Heidegger, and it is to this ambiguity that he traces the for­ getting of being which he finds characteristic of the metaphysics of the West. 1 To counteract this confusion and bring the ambiguity of the Greek word for being into clearer focus, Heidegger makes what he calls the 'ontological difference, ' a fundamental distinction between being and thing. The ambiguity of the word for being in the Greek tradition of metaphysics must certainly be granted. In Parmenides the older word To Mv can be made to take a purely logical meaning. It becomes being in general, independent of any relation to existing things. Or one can take this essentially logical concern and transfer it from being to things, so that the question of what being is becomes the question of what it means to be a 'what, ' and what would be necessary for a being to be a what (Plato). From this concern with being as a what Aristotle can consider being as a something (ov � 6v) . In these two latter ways of doing metaphysics being can become j ust another thing, or else merely an aspect of the thing which is more or less generalized. What is a thing or a being ? It is, as we have attempted to show, an essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. It is from the essential aspect of this relation that the concept or idea, the essential aspect of this relation, is taken. But as we have also attempted to show, this latter essential relation between phenomena and noumena has nothing to do, by necessity, with the essential. It may be true that it is only through the essen­ tial relation between phenomena and noumena that the phenomenal

35

and noumenal poles of the existential are known. But since it would be possible to gain an intellectual determination or definition of the limits of the being only if its being actually were limited, every concept or idea of the thing - if it \Would be essentially true - must be derived from the essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. Only if the being of a being is actually limited can its limits be determined and defined conceptually. However, metaphysics cannot stop or rest satisfied with an analysis of concepts or even, simply, with that from which the concept derives, namely with the essential relation between phenom­ enon and noumenon. For, as we have seen, even the limits of human knowledge in this regard can only be experienced existentially. By the same token, the particular thing is not necessarily static, and the dynamism implied in its constant appearance requires the mediation of the existential. The only means whereby the thing can remain self-identical with itself is through the existential. For the self-identity of the thing is neither phe�omenal nor is it noum­ enal ; it is relational. Its self-identity is as an essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon continuing in appear­ ance. And in order that it be actually relational the existential is required. The thing can be what it is only by being and continuing to be what it is. The existential necessarily has an influence upon the way in which the particular thing grows and develops, if only in accordance with the speed with which internal and external forces operate upon the rapidity and character of its appearance. Nonetheless, there remain limits within which all such existential influence must operate ; otherwise the thing can be destroyed or so mutated that it ceases to be what it is. In other words, Sartre is only partially correct when he says that existence precedes essence. 2 The exis­ tential necessarily has an influence upon the 'Yay a particular thing grows and develops. However, it is possible for the thing to become the unique thing that it is only because, in the first place, it both is and is a certain kind of thing. In other words, the growth and change of this particular thing can take place only within certain specified limits, that is, if it is to remain this certain kind of thing, as thus first established. But let us return to the question of the relation between being and thing. If matters .. were other than they are ; for example, if there were only one being, then the relation between thing and being would be very different. In fact, if there were only one being, then Parmenides would be correct ; there would be no things. There

36

would be no things, each one self-identical with itself, and separate from other things. However, if there were only one being, one might even ask whether it could actually be called one, sinc;e there would be nothing with which to compare by taking the being of everything that exists and abstracting it to the level of the 'in general. ' There is a richness, a superfluity, to being which cannot so easily be categorized and conceptualized, no matter how sharp the tools of logic or of language may be honed. But although being is not a thing, it is nonetheless related to the thing ; otherwise the thing itself wot1ld not be. This relationship is a curious one. For the locus, the locale of the thing's relation to being is the noumenally existential pole of the thing, the nothing between thing and being. The reason why this curious relationship pertains must await a fuller explanation later. But if no one thing is being, and being is not a thing, then from the point of view of being the thing is nothing ; and from the point of view of things being is nothing. Nevertheless, this gap and separation between the thing and being should not blind us to the relationship that necessarily obtains between the two. For this 'nothing' has peculiar properties. It separates the thing from being, but since there is literally nothing between the thing and being, there is also nothing to separate the thing from being by any necessity. When we speak of the noumen­ ally existential, we are dealing with the locus for that tenuous relation of separation between the thing and being which makes it possible for the thing to break off its relation to being, appear totally, completely, and entirely in its own disappearance. The locale of the thing's relation to being is nothing. And it is this nothing that is the ' difference, ' that is, the relation of separation between being and the thing. But since being does not itself appear totally, completely, and entirely, but only as some-thing ; and since non-being does not appear at all, and there can be no pure becoming without becoming something, being must have phenomenal and noumenal poles, such as described, with a relation stretching between them, able to be related to the thing at the locus of the thing's relation to being. Being is the existential relation between phenomena (the pure becoming of being and non-being) and noumena (the non-being of nothing that does not appear). This, then, is the necessary relation that being has to the thing : if there were no-thing being, there would be no being. Being does not appear, but something of being appears. And

37

only insofar as something of being does appear, can being appear. This is the necessary connection between being and thing, the locale of which is nothing. This nothing could not be being or something. The difference between something and nothing is being. The difference between being and nothing is something. For something of being does appear. Nothing does not appear, unless being should somehow be made to appear in its totality which would be dis­ appearance, rather than appearance. But although there is this difference between being and nothing, namely something, this difference is not absolute. For the thing is not separated from being, otherwise the thing would not be. The thing and being are separated literally by nothing. This means that although they are intimately related, in accordance with the pos­ sibility of total appearance, they are also separable. The nothing whereby they are united can, in total appearance, lead to their separation. So much of the thing can be made to appear that its continuance in appearance as the app�arance of being can be rendered impossible. Being is not a thing, nor is the thing purely and simply being. They are separated by nothing. This nothing, however, also insures that only something of being, not the whole of being, appears. This relation of separation which is the difference between being and thing works both ways: no one thing can appear as being ; neither can being appear totally in one thing. Only something of being appears, and being appears only as something. This does not make of being some sort of subsistent relation ; for example, between phenomena and noumena. In the first place, being can appear in a wide variety of different ways. It is neither as stable or as static as would be demanded by a relationship which would be subsistent. Similarly, for that relationship to be a sub­ sistent one the phenomenal and noumenal poles would also have to exist in a way that we have seen to be impossible. In fact, if the existential relation between phenomena and noumena were a sub­ sistent one, then it would have to be God. And in such a case there would be no distinction between things, nor would it be possible to distinguish between nature taken as a whole and God. This is basically the position of Spinoza - Deus sive Natura. In such a view there can be no genuine growth or development. For as we shall at­ tempt to show in greater detail later, it is the relation of the thing to its possible unrelating to being, which, bringing the noumenal nothing into immediate play, forces the individual thing to change, and adapt, and as a species to evolve. 38

Certainly, then, the noumenal side of the existential could not as nothing, support being as a subsistent relation, any more than could the phenomenal side of pure becoming. The# pure becoming of the existentially phenomenal, whose uncertain varia­ tions between being and non-being represent pure indeterminacy, could hardly act as a solid pole or permanent basis for any sub­ sistent relation. Hence, just as the phenomenal pole of the essential produces a vagueness and fuzziness to our knowledge of things as they approach pure appearance, so that we may be better able to say what the thing is not, rather than· what it is, so also in the phenomenal pole of the existentia( we encounter a pure becoming whose very existence and non-existence remains necessarily dubious. The ultimate reason for the dynamism which being exhibits, and the dynamism which forces the being of the thing to appear more and more completely and to become, lies - so it appears at this stage of the argument - with being and with the relation which the thing has to being. For it is the relation of the thing to being which forces the being of the thing constantly to move back and forth between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between a be­ coming which lacks all determinacy and a nothingness which rep­ resents the total appearance of disappearance. It is this forced dynamism of being which is, as we shall see in gre�ter detail later, the ultimate basis for change in the individual thing, whether it be living or non-living. There is, of course, a significant difference in the way something living and something non-living appears and becomes; nonetheless, it is the dynamic force of being that keeps things appearing in new guises and aspects. Being appears in these new guises beyond the noumenal locale of the thing which, as the nothing separating the thing from being, forces it to change, develop, and, as a species, to evolve simply in order to remain in being. This nothing as the relation of separation between the thing and being must receive more careful attention, as also must the noumena of being itself, if this peculiar relation of separation is to be seen for what it is and for the fundamental importance that it possesses.

5.

BEING AND TRUTH

In Plato's dialogue the Meno a sophistical objection concerning the possibility of any inquiry at all is posed by Socrates. The argument in its exact form, or as it is reformulated (and left un­ answered) by Socrates is not important. What is important in the brief exchange is the admitted truth of the question as posed by 39

Meno, though Socrates attempts to toss it off as purely eristic. Meno questions the very nature of questioning itself. He argues that one cannot inquire either about what we know or about what we do not know. For how, he aS'ks, is it possible to inquire about what we already know, for it is already known ? And how can we inquire about what we do not know, since we would not even know how to go about asking concerning it ? 1 Plato recognized the problem fundamental to all questioning. To ask the right question, that is, to ask the question which will yield the answer that is sought, we must to some extent already know the answer to the question. We must know it so that we will ask the right question in the first place. For if we ask the wrong question, we will be off on the wrong track from the start. Furthermore, we must already know the answer if we are to seek it in the right direction. It is not possible to carry on an inquiry simultaneously in all directions. And finally, we must know the answer to our question so that we will k,now when to cease the inquiry. If we had absolutely no idea what answer was expected, we could not know when or if the question we asked had received a satisfactory answer or not. Kant was also aware of this basic interrelation between question and answer. In the Critique of Pure Reason he uses the metaphor of the judge (reason) compelling the witness (nature) to give up the answers to questions which reason has formulated. 2 We can ask questions only in this directed and directional fashion. For to ask a question means that we are convinced that this question will force the revelation of truth that we hope to win through the answer to the question. We do not ask questions simply for the sake of asking questions, as children often do, asking 'why' after 'why' to the eventual embarrassment of their parents. We ask questions to obtain answers, and answers to our questi,ons. There is a basic 'intentionality' to all human inquiry. Heidegger retains this basic intentionality of question and answer as the keystone of his analysis of · the 'being question' (Seinsfrage). This is not Husserl's intentionality between the noesis and the noema, whose locus is human consciousness ; nor is it an intentionality between subject and object in some classical epistemol­ ogical sense. The intentionality is between questioner and question­ ed, with the added faa-tor that the questioner is also included in the question. As Heidegger says, the asking of this question of being is a mode of that very being that asks the question. 3 But besides recognizing the necessary involvement of man, as a being, in any

40

questioning of being, Heidegger goes further : the only being that can be asked the being question is the being able to give answer to it, namely that being whose being is to be 'here' (Da-sein}, as the center for other 'there's.' This is the ultimate basis of Heidegger's notion of the circle or compass of understanding (Zirkel des Ver­ stehens) , 4 the necessary finiteness of human understanding which justifies Heidegger's 'fundamental ontology,' namely beginning the question of being from Dasein' s being. From the answer, or at least from the way shown to the answer, it is possible to gain some intim3;tion of the question Heidegger is is really asking. And possibly through a brief look at the kind of questions Heidegger poses concerning the meaning of being, it may be possible to clarify something of the relation between being and truth. Certainly Heidegger is not asking the question 'What is being ?', as though being were merely the essential relation between phenom­ ena and noumena. As he states right in the preface to Being and Time, his concern is with the meaning of being (Sinn von Sein). He is not concerned with the meaning of the word being, as though it were merely a question of language; nor is he concerned with the meaning of the concept, as though it were a question for logic. But when Heidegger gives at least a provision.al answer to the question of the place to search for the meaning of being, namely Dasein, the being whose 'here' makes 'there's' possible, one may decide with a certain justice that the question which he asks in order to gain the truth of being is '\tVhere is being ?' And the answer is right here in the being that is able to ask the question. But besides the possible answers of here and there, or a here making there's possible, one could as easily say, with equally justifiable reasons, that being is as much everywhere as it is somewhere, elsewhere as it is here and there, and even nowhere as it is any­ where. In other words, the exact 'position' of being cannot be determined. In the early pages of his Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger toys with another formulation of the being question, one first formulated by the seventeenth century philosopher Leibniz, 'Why are there beings rather than nothing ? ' 5 But the question why there is being, or why there is anything existing at all, either proves excessively metaphysical, since there are, in fact, existing beings, so that the question becomes contrary to fact; or else it is a theo­ logical question whose answer is divine creation. On all these ways in which the being question can be posed,

41

some of them posed expressly by Heidegger, the answer that is gained depends to a great extent upon the question that is asked, and how it is asked. It is possible to ask questions for which there is no answer, or to ask the question in such a way that the answer is a priori falsified. The truth that we gain about being has an intimate relation to the questions that we ask of being. Being appears as something; however', we cannot hope to make that thing appear totally, completely, and entirely except in its total dis­ appearance. And this proves a destructive road to truth, and one whose results cannot be metaphysically relevant, since metaphysics can concern itself only with what is. Metaphysics seeks the truth of being. How, then, are being and truth related such that this truth might be gained ? One can, of course, say that they are related in human knowledge. But human knowledge is an inconstant affair. Similarly, the way man is able to treat things in an adequate and successful manner, through successful prediction and control, is not necessarily the way things are. There is the possibility of the increase and com­ pletion of such knowledge through continued existential contact. Finally, such knowledge does not necessarily touch the truth of the particular thing. In fact, even for such adequate and successful knowledge, being is and must already be implicated for truth to be in any sense. But if truth and being are implicated with each other they must be alike in some way. They are certainly alike in that both truth and being lie beyond the phenomenal, beyond becoming and beyond pure appearance. They are also alike in that truth and being lie this side of the noumenal, since the noumenal taken essentially is ignorance, and taken existentially, nothing. Being lies beyond the phenomenal since it is constantly forcing its way beyond pure indeterminate becoming to be some-thing. Since such appearances of being as things 'could come only from the direction of the noumenal, it must mean that there is being beyond the noumenon of the thing as well. This could mean one of three things. At this point we shall merely note them briefly, and leave until later an elaboration of their possible meanings. This noumenon of being could mean a temporal process which always points in the direction of a noumenal goal ever ahead of existing things. This corresponds closely to Aristotle's notion of teleology. It could mean a constant and continuous creation within being, pushing it beyond its own noumenal nothing. This is not too dissimilar from the elan vital of Bergson, and similar concepts among

42

the process philosophers. Or, finally, it could mean a 'beyond' where there would be absolutely nothing. Truth must also be beyond the phenomenal. If it '¾ere not, there could be no truth of the essential, such as obtains with the essential relation between phenomena and noumena, or as obtains in adequate knowledge. But it is beyond the phenomenal in a different way than is being. The becoming of being approaches the phenomenal from the direction of the noumenal. Truth approaches the noumenal from the direction of the phenomenal. From the way in which tru\h and being approach each other, it might seem as though their issue would never be j oined. They would seem to be moving in opposite directions. Indeed, if man were not a being whose being is transubj ective to himself the j oining of truth and being could never take place. For man is at least one instance in being where the moment of truth actually does take place, where the converging lines of the directions of being and truth meet in a moment which is independent of the moments of time and places in space where those things exist which man under­ stands and stands among, and which through his projective under­ standing of them man is able to pre-adapt for his future. Not all of man's knowing escapes these reaches of time and place. Even the understanding which projects the new possibilities of man's future, which will create a world of tools and institutions to adapt the then present future to man and for man, does not escape the reaches of time. But we are not here concerned with man's adequate knowledge of things, but with the basis for the truth of such adequate knowledge. Man is, indeed, a being in time and place. He is also a particular essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon. This means that he can recognize, in truth, that his own being is transubjective to the truth he may have of it, so that the meeting of truth and being, even taken in relation to his own being, can escape the reaches of time. The union of truth and being does not occur in time ; but neither may it be said to occur in eternity, as we shall see in the following scholion. If it occurred in time, then the moment of truth would have to take place either in the past, the present, or the future. If it occurred in the past, the only access to it would be, in the last analysis, history, which would involve the fallibility of the human memory and records. If in the present, then we are totally deter­ mined by present knowledge and experience. And if it occurred only in the future, then man is reduced to the uncertainty of trial and error or to a purely pragmatic theory of truth. And this leads, 43

ultimately, to the position that truth appears only when being stops appearing, for only then . is their issue ultimately j oined, that is, in disappearance. Or one can take the view of £artre in his 'prereflexive cogito,' which says that even prior to the truth contained in consciousness there had to be a relationship between mind and thing already in being, such that present conscious knowledge and reflection should be possible. 6 Such a union between truth and being had to occur in the past. And though this may go far in explaining what may be called the 'metaphysics of perception' and avoid the cruder forms of relativism, it fails to explain anything beyond the truth of actual perception. Neither may the union of truth and being occur simply in the present. Present knowledge and experience is never complete, as but the briefest passage of time and new knowledge and experience serve to reveal. Nor may the union of truth and being be said to join issue in the future. It is true that man's proj ective understanding is able to take the adequate knowledge he possesses from the present and the past, and project it into the future,· not simply in order to understand and predict, but also to gain some measure of control over the world within which he lives. Nonetheless, the being that is necessarily implied in a truth which proves adequate and the truth of being are far from identical. The way in which things may be suc­ cessfully understood, that is, stood among, is not necessarily the way things are, as is indicated by the fact that these 'stands' must often be revised and brought up to date in the light of new knowl­ edge and experience. This does not, of course, mean that being has nothing whatso­ ever to do with time, or that it represents something eternal.- But being and the truth of being are not identical; and the truth of being could not be temporal. The union of truth and being is beyond the reaches of time. It is beyond time because it is beyond man taken purely and simply as an essential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, that is, as a something. It is beyond man because man is a being for whom being is transubjective, and whose own being is transubjective to himself as a subj ect. It is this transubjectivity of his own being that makes it possible for man's thought to escape the reaches of time. For as does any essential and existential relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal, there is in man a noumenal nothing, a gap, a relation of separation between thing and being. This is within man,

44

and it is through this gap and beyond it that any joining of truth and being must take place. Man, then, is capable of thought. His thinking escapes the reaches of the temporal, for as a being to whom being is transubjective his thought represents an awareness of the transubjectivity of being, and - because man is also a being even of the transubjectivity of man's own being. Thought is not, then, the here and now of present perception and experience ; nor is it the accumulation of past knowledge and future expectations . It represents, rather, man's purest attempt to bring to pass the union between being and truth.,. This transubjectivity which man has to his own being means that in his very grasp of being he is able to set himself beyond the purely temporal considerations of his normal and adequate knowl­ edge of things. He can allow this knowledge to pass beyond the noumenal nothing, which is the relation of separation between himself as an existent being and the inner life of self-reflective reflection, and thus give consideration to matters reduced of every necessary spatio-temporal dimension and meaning. Nonetheless, man is not thereby forced to think the truth of being as an eternal present, for from his understanding of being as a being that also stands among things he can also think being as temporal. The noumenal nothing as a relation oj separation does not block, but renders possible the truth of being which man is able to gain in the self-reflective reflection of thought . It is in this way that man is able to escape a relativism which would otherwise make every truth of being ultimately the subjective knowledge of the present state of knowledge and human experience, along with the projections of future expectations. SCHOLION : THE REFUTATION OF RELATIVISM

Hegel is probably correct : it is impossible to refute another philosophy. Refutation must be either internal or external. If it is external, one must stand outside the philosophy, and from a particular philosophical standpoint criticize the assumptions and presuppositions made, or perhaps accepted uncritically, by the philosopher. The danger of such external refutation is that one may refute the philosophy simply according to norms and criteria which the philosopher does not and, in some cases, could not accept . Such 'refutation' is less a refutation of the philosophy itself than a translation of the philosopher's thought into our own modes of thought and ways of thinking, so that in the end the philosophy

45

is rej ected on the basis of our own presuppositions and principles. In the final analysis presuppositions and assumptions cannot of themselves be refuted. They can merely be pointed out, their implications shown, then either a�epted or rejected. Refutation is internal when we enter as thoroughly as possible into the spirit and letter of the philosophy, attempting an internal criticism of unresolved contradictions or pointing out the excessive liberties taken with logic or language. But such internal criticism is, in a sense, unnecessary, since if there are unresolved inconsis­ tencies in the philosophy, it is internally self-refuting ; hence, it does not require refutation. But if the internal criticism is under­ stood in its more proper sense, it is self-defeating. For to refute another philosopher 'from the inside' , so to speak, it would be necessary to enter into that philosophy so completely that we should soon lose every external, and hence critical, basis for refu­ tation. In such a case any basis for j udgment in the matter would be ruled out. And such purely internal criticism could be adjudged little more than philosophical opportunism.' Refutation may take other forms, however. For a particular philosophy is fundamentally an intellectual answer to a specific question, sometimes scientific, sometimes theological, more often than not both. This means that the answer, which is the philosophy, can be said to contain, in however disguised a fashion, the question to which the philosopher addresses himself. One may attempt to refute or reject the philosophy because it fails to answer certain questions he desires to have answered, even questions considered traditional in philosophy. But this is not entirely fair. One may, of course, point out these lacunae ; and the failure on the part of the philosopher in question to consider this or that problem may offer a valuable insight into his character and approach. But this hardly constitutes a refutation, since the presuppositions and as­ sumptions at the basis of such a criterion may simply be ours. There is one other way in which refutation may be attempted ; and that is to show that the particular question to which the philos­ ophy gives answer is really a false way of asking the question, or that the problem to which he addresses himself is, in fact, a pseudo­ problem. Refutation of this sort is both external and internal. It is intern al in that we are getting down to the very heart of the philosopher's thought,.. which is his fundamental way of asking questions. It is external in the sense that it is possible for us to stand outside this process of question and answer, and view both these, and the assumptions made, in an independent and critical light.

46

But even if the refutation of another philosophy in terms of a proper combination of internal and external criticism should be possible, the question remains whether the philosophical position should be refuted. This is especially the case with relativism. For the refutation of relativism would have elements of internal criti­ cism to it, which elements would depend upon the very 'philosophy' we were attempting to refute, namely relativism. For what gives rise to relativism is basically the same as that which would make internal refutation of any sort possible. There is a certain truth to relativism which cannot be denied or dispensed with. The ' rela­ tivism' which makes it possible for us to put ourselves in another's place, attempting to appreciate and sympathize with his particular way of looking at things is not only a necessity of ordinary human intercourse, it is even necessary for that intellectual communication essential to any philosophical discourse. Hence, it is relativism that would make internal criticism possible. For to refute a philos­ ophy 'from the inside' we must first get inside, and this involves putting ourselves in another's intellectual shoes, immersing ourselves ever more deeply in his ways and modes of thinking. For these reasons one might well wonder, not only whether a refutation of relativism would be possible, but also whether it would even be desirable. But besides the importance of relativism for the appreciation and sympathy with another person's point of view and way of looking at things, and hence even for the dialogue of philosophical discourse, there is also a fundamental truth to relativism. As we have seen, what may be adequate knowledge for one particular person or sphere of knowledge will not necessarily be adequate for another person in another sphere of interest. It may seem strange to assert that there is a fundamental truth to relativism, particularly since we normally associate rela­ tivism with such intellectual diseases as solipsism and skepticism, or with historicism and psychologism,- or other dangerous 'ism's' connected with the subjectivism of modern thought. Possibly relativism is but a philosophical phobia, along with the other intellectual diseases mentioned, skepticism, atheism, etc. ; and perhaps the medicine concocted and administered for these 'diseases' is worse than the illness. Perhaps the mind is so afraid of falling into these obvious pitfalls of the mind exactly because they are obvious ; and they may be obvious because they contain more than an element of truth. There is, after all, a fundamental truth to the historicism to

47

which Husserl sought to respond. For although it is untrue that there is no truth independent of historical circumstance, it is true that historical truth can best be gained, and made more meaningful, when it is seen within the contex\ of historical situation. There is also a certain truth to the psychologism which insists that my perception of anything, because of my peculiar background and character, is, at least to some extent, peculiar and unique. Solipsism also contains its grain of truth in the fact that all knowledge of anything does and must begin with the knower. Similarly, the skepticism which represents a healthy distrust of the data of our knowing faculties and of our theorizing, and even of our most basic assumptions and presuppositions, has shown itself one of the most positive values in the growth and development of science. One may even say that there is a certain truth to atheism. For certainly if we should attempt to understand God as a being in the same way that cats and canaries, tables and trees are beings, then, as Tertullian long ago said, it is better to deny God's existence, rather than ascribe to him the wrong kind. And there is also a truth to relativism, in that adequate knowledge does not necessarily have any more than a relative meaning, because the truth of adequate knowledge is but the relation between the phenomenal and the noumenal. For the thing does not appear wholly, completely and entirely; there is always a necessary element of the unknown about it. For this reason relativism must not be seen as the great scandal of philosophy, as Kant viewed it as he looked across the idea­ strewn battleground of metaphysics. 1 Relativism, no more than any of the other 'ism's' - except perhaps in their pure form - do not at once constitute a serious danger to the philosopher. Their danger lies not in themselves, but in the excesses to which they drive philosophers in attempting to avoid them. For example, faced with the danger of relativism, the philosopher may attempt to leap to some absolute unity of truth and being in eternity. In fact, one may interpret Plato's philosophy as but the attempt to escape the moral and intellectual relativism of the Sophists through a leap to the eternal reality of the ideas. It is, of course, natural that the philosopher should fear the ghost that haunts pure relativism. For he is well aware that the statement 'All truth is relative' both is and is not an absolute statement. It is absolute because it insists upon the relative char­ acter of all truth. And yet, if the statement should be true, it would have to be a relative statement ; that is, if it is absolutely true that all truth is relative. 48

But if the truth of adequate knowledge, for example, is rela­ tive, then the philosopher, in attempting to avoid a relativism which would consider all truth relative, finds himself in search of a philosophical absolute, that is, a truth which is not itself felative, to which all relative truths might be related. Very often in modern philosophy, at least in classical modern philosophy the absolute to which the human mind immediately leaps in the face of the danger of absolute relativism in human knowledge is God. Certainly this is true of the father of modern philosophy, Descartes. For in the Meditations it is actually God, considered as absolute truth, who ultimately saves Descartes from an empty solipsism, and a rela­ tivism of eternally possible deception regarding knowledge of the external world. 2 The appeal to the absolute in the face of the otherwise total relativity of the singular is also to be found in Spinoza's third and highest kind of knowledge, namely 'intuitive science. ' The partic­ ular thing can be known in its unique individuality only insofar as it is seen in God, under the aspect of eternity. Spinoza insists ·that otherwise particular things cannot be or be understood, since God is the sole cause both of the essence and of the existence of all things. 3 Even Kant grounds the ultimate possibility of phenomena, and hence of experience in general, in the ens realissimum. As he says, the manifoldness of things rests upon all thaf follows from the primordial being as their ground (Grund, reason or cause), including thus all our sensibility and all reality in the field of appearance. 4 It is God that, in guaranteeing the possibility of phenomena as their ground, guarantees the possibility of the knowledge of any object in general. In Hegel, too, one might argue that it is because the Absolute is with us and wills to be with us from the very start, 5 that the dialectically graded steps of spirit to absolute self-knowledge of itself are able to avoid the interpretation that they represent merely the 'bacchanalian revel' of an absolute relativism. 6 The solution of certain modern philosophers to the problem of relativism might seem, at first sight, quite innocuous, even virtuous and pious. However, the solution quickly crystalizes into something undesirable. For if one must know God in order to know relative truths, then how is one to know God, or the absolute truth, neces­ sary in order to know relative truths, particularly if it is possible to know those relative truths only through the absolute truth. Spinoza for example, maintains that the individual thing can be known under the aspect of eternity. But he also says that from this 'part' of 49

nature we can gain an adequate knowledge of the 'whole' of nature, that is, substance or God. 7 The reason why Spinoza can have it both ways is that he denies any real distinction between cause and effect, between God and nature., between natura naturans and natura naturata. But not all philosophers have thought it advisable to make this step. The use to which God is 1JU t in certain modern philosophers may strike one as odd. For example, in the case of Kant, God is fitted so neatly and comfortably into a niche in the philosophical scheme of speculative reason that one may suspect that much more is known speculatively about God than purely speculative con­ siderations would seem to warrant. Similarly in the case of Descartes, to use God in order to guarantee the validity of my perception of obj ects in the external world, or saving Descartes from the 'evil genius,' seem to represent somewhat menial tasks for God to perform. Likewise, Hegel would seem to possess a complete knowl­ edge of God, since not only does he know how to use God to the best philosophical advantage, but God seems to have been totally comprehended within the system. The temptation to use God, to turn him into some metaphysical or epistemological function, will be religiously repugnant to some and philosophically suspect to others. The Deus which is merely a deus ex machina can never prove ultimately satisfactory either to the religious soul or to the philosophical mind. Relativism may thereby be avoided ; but it is avoided only at the cost of falling into a different and more fatal kind of relativism, one which undermines not only man's possible knowledge of God, but even knowledge recognized as fully human. It is not surprising, or particularly impious, that the concepts of God created for specific philosophical functions in one age should be denied in the atheisms of the next. The panic-filled leap to the nearest absolute in order to avoid the phobia of philosophical relativism must, however, be under­ stood at its roots. And these roots lie in the way that truth has traditionally been understood as a relation between mind and thing, between subject and object. Truth is viewed classically as the agreement of the intellect and the thing (adaequatio rei et intellectus) . But as Heidegger has pointed out in the brief essay ' On the Essence of Truth, ' there are two possible, and two very different, inter­ pretations of this phra�e. Because of the basic meaning of adaequare, which means 'to make equal to, ' this 'agreement' between mind and thing can be either the agreement of the mind to the thing (intellectus ad rem) , or of the thing to the mind (rei ad intellectum. 8)

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In other words, if truth is to occur, must the mind agree with the thing, or must the thing agree with the mind ? The fact that either the mind must agree with the thing or the thing with the mind would seem to indicate a basic eleinent of inequality in human knowing, since adaequare means 'to make equal to,' and not simply 'to equal;' so that one must be made to equal the other. And very likely the attempt on the part of modern philosophers to find some element of stability within a human knowing containing this inequality, one way or the other, may account for the leaps to God or to an absolute in order to avoid the relativism which might otherwise obtain, particularly if - as is the case with the majority of thinkers after Kant - one defines truth as the agreement of the thing to the mind. In Descartes' attempts to avoid relativism in the knowing process, that is, by finding some stable point or anchor in it, something that was both certain and existent, he discovered the indubitable Cogito. This was safe, sure ground upon which one might stand, found, and build a system of thought. However, the 'I think' which was so certain of the 'I exist,' though it avoided the relativism of skepticism, did not necessarily avoid that of an extreme subjectivism. For a contentless 'I think,' constantly thinking that it thinks, could become both tedious and trivial. Kant also insisted upon the fundamental necessity of the 'I think' as the ultimate form of all human knowledge in general. It had to accompany all my representations so that they might truly be called mine. 9 But in order that there might be representations of objects of knowledge there had to be an empirical content. This was supplied by the sensory manifold. As Kant expressed it in his famous couplet, 'Thoughts without content are empty ; intuitions without concepts are blind.' 1 0 But although the transcendental ego is the ultimate, necessary condition for human knowing in general, it is the categories of the understanding which provide one of the points of stability in the process of human knowing for Kant. They are the fixed forms according to which the formless material provided by the sensory manifold is structured. The other point of stability is provided by the 'thing in itself,' which as the correlate to sensibility ever remains real, though unknowable. The noumenon or 'thing in itself' is a point of stability in the knowing process in the sense that it is a limit beyond which human knowledge cannot proceed. Providing these two points of stability in the knowing process did not entirely solve the problem. For a means was required to

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subsume the sensible intuitions, given under the form of time, under the pure concepts of t.h e understanding. The schematism was this 'third something. ' The transcendental schematism was not itself empirical ; yet it nevertheless combined both the intellec­ tual and the sensible. The transcendental schema, as Kant says, is the rule to mediate apriori the appearances under the category. 11 The schematism of the transcendental imagination could bend the rigidity of the pure concepts of the understanding so that they might come into contact with what is empirically given. However, because of the way in which time necessarily runs through the operations of the transcendental imagination, the process of human knowing is again rendered fluid and the points of sta bility are not, strictly speaking, noetically pertinent. Bergson, particularly after the scientific theory of evolution had made its impact upon philosophical speculation, accepted the necessary noetic fluidity in the knowing process as, ideally, in accordance with the fluidity of reality itself. He conceived of duration (duree) as the essential quality of reality, and likened it metaphorically to a river constantly flowing. 12 And the power of human knowing able to get the human mind into contact with this flow he termed 'intuition. ' For Bergson 'stability' in the knowing process consisted in meshing the gears between an intuition penetrated to the heart with a temporal sense and the moving temporal flow of reality. The continuing attempt on the part of modern philosophers to find points of stability in human knowing, particularly after the Copernican Revolution of Kant, when truth is understood primarily as the agreement of the thing to the mind, is instructive. For it seems clear that the attempt to find points of stability within the knowing process itself is essentially a fruitless one, that is, if it is indeed true that human knowing does involve a process. Hence, the attempt to escape the demon of relativism and skepticism, which might peer out at the philosopher in his sleep, by leaping to the nearest absolute may be seen as unnecessary, and as a funda­ mental denial of the necessary element of time involved in the human process which is coming to know. In this sense, then, the philosopher who leaps to the nearest absolute in order to avoid relativism may be seen to fall into a relativism of an even more sophisticated and dangerous sort. For to hypostatize an ab;;olute to perform a specific philosophical function, to 'locate' the union of truth and being in eternity, or to place that union within the subjectivity of pure consciousness - all these 'solutions' to the problem of relativism, by projecting the

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explanation to the problem totally outside the realm of time, tend to make human knowing not less, but more relative. However, then those relative truths are not relative in accordance with the relation between mind and thing, or thing and mind, and fn accor­ dance with a temporality which is endemic in the human process of coming to know; they are rather relative to something hypostatized outside that relation and beyond the reaches of a time which would make that relation meaningful. This does not, of course, mean that man's human knowing does not and cannot escape the reaches of time. But it does mean that relativism can be avoided only by recognizing its fundamental truth. There is a necessary relativity and temporality inherent in the greater part of human knowing. Man's adequate knowledge of things as a being among things is, after all, necessarily relative and temporal. However, rather than indicating that man's knowledge is totally relative and absolutely temporal, or, on the other hand, forcing him to leap to the nearest absolute, this fact should act as a counterpoise, setting into sharper relief the union of truth and being which man is able to bring to pass through his thought. For man is not only a being among other beings, he is also a being for whom being is transubj ective. And further, because he remains a being among other beings, he is a being whose being is transubjective even to himself as a subject. And it is this, curiously, that makes possible a knowing which escapes the here and now of time. For the union of truth and being takes place beyond the gap, beyond the noumenal nothing which, in the case of man, is the relation of separation between thing and being. It is this relation of separation between the thing and being at the locus of the noumenal nothing - in man's case the psychic nothing - which renders possible the the union of truth and being, and which thus renders possible a knowledge which transcends the here and now of relative truths. The basis for this position will be argued more completely in part IV. Hence man's knowledge of these relative truths does not depend upon a union of truth and being which lies beyond the reach of time. The union of truth and being cannot be a hypostatization by the human mind in order to escape the reaches of relativism. Rather, the recognition of the truth of relativism will alone make possible any genuine union of truth and being beyond the here and now.

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CHAPTER III

A BR I E F H I STOR Y OF NOTHING

Throughout his works, and particularly in his later ones, Heidegger argues that there is a history of being (Geschichte des Seins), a history of the way in which being has fatefully sent itself out (Geschick) to man through the ages. But if there is a history to being, and if being involves the nothing of the existentially noumenal, then there must also be a history of nothing as well. And perhaps this negative of the history of being may be able to tell us as much about being, as being's photographic negative. I . THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

The history of non-being or of nothing begins right with the father of metaphysics, namely Parmenides. This does not mean that prior to Parmenides there was no discussion of non-being. In his Theogony (1 1, 6) Hesiod uses the Greek word chaos in this sense. For him chaos did not simply mean disorder or confusion, but a 'gaping void. ' It was the first state of the universe, a yawning gap or abyss, a vast gulf of emptiness. One may say that, in general, the philosophers prior to Par­ menides tended to think of nature as a balarice within which vari­ ations occurred in accordance with various theories of opposites. Thus Anaximander considered the changes in -the physical universe as coming forth from and returning to the inexhaustible source of 'the unlimited' (to apeiron) according to the ordering of time. 1 Thus the heat of summer returned to the unlimited because it had exceed­ ed the bounds of justice, as judged by time, to be replaced by the cold of winter. In this simple fashion Anaximander was able to account for the changes that occur in nature, and also for the balance which obtains between the various opposites in nature. One can find a similar thinking in terms of opposites also in 54

Heraclitus. It is revealed in its most basic form in the way Heraclitus looks upon God. As he says in fragment 67, God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety famine (all the opposites together, this is the meaning) ; he undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them. 2 This does not mean that God is either day or night, winter or summer, etc. ; he is both day and night, winter and summer, etc. God is the unity of the various opposites or their substrate. As Heraclitus insists in fragment 50, evei;ything is one. Indeed, men may view God as one or the other of the opposites in the same way that men may react in different ways to the incense thrown on the fire ; nevertheless, the opposition of the various opposites is only apparent. They are really one in their substrate God. Thinking in terms of opposites was also characteristic of other pre-Socratic thinkers. The Pythagoreans drew up complete tables of opposites in accordance with their essentially mathematical view of the universe. Anaxagoras tended to return to Anaximander's view, taking his 'unlimited' as a mixture containing in embryo the seeds of all things. 3 Empedocles as well tended to employ a theory of opposites to explain physical phenomena. 4 Similarly Alcmaeon of Croton found in the balance of opposites the basis and explanation for health. 5 But it was Parmenides who brought the early Greek thinking in terms of opposites to an end. For he found something for which there was not an opposite. 2 . PARM E N I DES

In fragment two Parmenides outlines two ways of inquiry, that of being and that of non-being. But the way of non-being does not and cannot exist. How could that which does not exist possibly be known ? And to attempt to talk about what does not exist would be to talk nonsense. 6 This means that there are opposites for everything except one, namely being. For non-being simply is not. This should have brought the history of nonbeing to an end before it had really begun. But although non-being had been forever expelled from the premises of philosophy, it had a way of reappearing under new and different guises. And there were good reasons for this, lying within the thought of Parmenides itself. For the reason Parmenides gave why non-being did not, and even could 55

not, exist was that it could not be known or spoken about. This was not entirely adequate. lt may be true that what does not exist cannot be known or spoken about in a meaningful manner, but this does not necessarily :mean that what is not presently known, and hence cannot be spoken about does not or could not exist. Furthermore, as one continues to read further in Parmenides' poem one keeps running into the non-being that does not and cannot exist. It plays a part in each one of the 'signposts' to the way of being and of truth. Thus being must be changeless and motionless because there is 'no place' (that is, non-being) into .which it might move. 7 Similarly being must be one and undivided, for the one thing that could divide being from its proximity to being would be non-being, and, again, non-being does not exist. Thus although it is vigorously rejected from Parmenides' thought, non-being continues to perform important metaphysical functions. Thus, for example, when he considers the way of mortals, or the way of seeming (doxa), he finds that the things mortals consider real, namely motion, change, division, etc. , could be constituted only by a mixing-up of the two forms of light (being) and darkness (non-being). 8 In effect, mortals end up saying that non-being both does and does not exist. Only if non-being plays this important philosophical function can the way things seem to mortals be accounted for. Parmenides found 'something, ' that is being, for which there is no opposite. For although he would thus seem to discard non­ being from any and every philosophical consideration, the fact is that he talks and thinks about non-being almost as much as he talks and thinks about being. And in the end non-being performs more philosophical functions for Parmenides than for any thinker in the West. Heidegger often speaks of the forgetting of being in western metaphysics. But one might argue that there is also a forgetting of nothing as well. For in repressing the discussion of non-being Parmenides simply drove it more deeply into the philosophical unconscious, so that later thinkers would give philosophical functions to non-being in an unconscious, and hence also in an uncritical, fashion. 3.

THE ATO M I STS

The atomists, however, consciously and deliberately asserted the existence of non-being. As Democritus put it laconically, 56

'Nothing (meden) exists just as much as does anything (den) . 9' If non-being exists just as much as does being, then we may well wonder what Democritus means by being. And the asnwer is clear : being is motion. For after Parmenides' sharp and incisive thought on the subject, there could be motion only if there would be some 'place, ' that is, 'no place' (non-being), into which being might move. The difficulty was that the philosophers after Parmenides could not be convinced that there was no such thing as change and motion. But given the force of Parmenides' arguments it seemed that there could be motion only if there was a void (non-being) into which the atoms (the tiniest part1cles of being) might move. Hence, non-being had to exist j ust as much as being. Otherwise there could be no motion, or even knowledge, since knowledge for the atomists required the movement of tiny atoms from the object through a void to the sense organ.

4.

PLATO

One finds non-being performing an important metaphysical function in Plato as well. Thus in an obvious reference to Parme­ nides in his dialogue the Sophist Plato notes that even when we say that non-being cannot be spoken or thought about, even then we say that non-being is unthinkable ; non-being zs unable to be spoken about . 1 0 Indeed, when anyone utters the word 'being, ' we understand what is meant ; whereas we say that we do not know anything about non-being. But Plato suggests, slyly, that we may be equally ignorant of both. 11 Plato includes non-being among the five basic forms, along with being, identity, motion, and rest . He notes, for example, that two of the basic forms, motion and rest, are opposed to each other. Motion is not rest, nor rest motion. Yet both motion and rest partake of being and identity. But as being is neither motion nor rest, it appears as perplexing as non-being. Besides motion, rest, being, and identity there must also be another basic form, namely difference or otherness. For that which makes each of the forms different from the other could only be 'otherness. ' Hence, each of the basic forms exists both in being and in otherness. 1 2 Thus, for example, motion is not rest, and rest is other than motion. This means that while motion participates in being, rest must participate in otherness. And this otherness is simply non­ being. Non-being must be given a status equal with being. 13 And there must be a form for this otherness, as the basis for the differ-

57

ences among things that partake of being. Only in this way, in Plato's view, could the plurality and multiplicity of the world be accounted for. Non-being must exist so that there might be a world of multiplicity, a world in \which things are different from each other. As he says, . . . being, difference or other, traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so that the - other partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is, and yet is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than being, it is clearly a necessity that non-being should be. 14 The non-being of Parmenides becomes the 'otherness' in Plato's world of ideas or forms, which world, it should be remembered, is for Plato the 'truly real.' Non-being performs the important meta­ physical function of accounting for multiplicity. Thus j ust as in Parmenides the non-existence of non-being made multiplicity and divisibility impossible, so in Plato the existence of non-being makes a multiple and divided world possible. 5.

ARISTOTLE

Non-being performs a similarly important metaphysical func­ tion in the philosophy of Aristotle. It is identified with matter, which for Aristotle is simply pure indeterminateness. As he says, By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined. 1 5 It is, of course, true that for Aristotle all sensible substance has matter. There has to be a substrate, something necessarily under­ lying all change. But the matter contained in sensible substance is already what he calls determined or differentiated matter. 16 The matter which is identical with non-being is the purely indeterminate and undifferentiated matter. It is pure potentiality, the potentiality to be anything, to take on any form. 1 7 For the Greeks that which is totally undetermined is literally no-thing. But because each and every thing must possess some matter in order to become 'mattered' in a certain form, Aristotle can say that a certain non-being may be attributable to some things. 1 8 And this differentiated matter, if it should cease to be, returns to that pure potentiality and inexhaustible source, not unlike 'the unlimited' of Anaximander, from which all mattered things derive. One can see the Parmenidean backdrop to Aristotle's view of a purely potential or unqualified matter. In order for something

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to come to be - which for Parmenides was impossible, since it would have to come from non-being - non-being must somehow exist. For Aristotle this 'non-being' is the formless, shapeless, absolutely indeterminate matter which can be formed or in�formed to be anything. But how does it, how can it exist ? On this score Aristotle must be careful. He cannot say that non-being simply exists, nor can he say that it does not. 1 9 Hence, he says that it both is and is not. It is as the pure potentiality to be anything ; but it is not actually, since it is not, by definition, actual, determinate being, but purely potential being. All coming to be for Aristotle requires a pre-existent something which both is and is not. 6.

PLOTINUS

There are times when one is tempted to doubt Porphry's evaluation of Plotinus' philosophy in the Vita Plotini as a conden­ sation of Aristotle's Metaphy sics. 2 0 The spirit of the Enneades seems so overwhelmingly Platonic. Yet, it is Aristotle's identification of matter and non-being which provides the missing link in the chain of non-being stretching between Plato and Plotinus. Plato had already made something close to an identification of matter and evil. More than likely Plato's position on this score, or the 'Platonic' position read into Plato, derived from his view of man. The material body was that in man which drags the soul down, as Plato argues in the Phaedo. For Plotinus also bodies and the world of the material universe approach evil as they share in matter. Such, he says, is the nature of bodies. 21 And since evil is the op­ posite of the One (which is identified with the good that is beyond being), then evil and non-being approach each other even more closely. 22 What Plotinus has done is to take the identification which Plato made between matter and evil, and the identification Aristotle made between matter and non-being, and join them together. This identification of evil and non-being will act as a powerful current in subsequent philosophical and theological thought in the West. Hence, for Plotinus non-being is not simply 'otherness, ' the ground for division and multiplicity, as it was for Plato. It is much more, because of the identification of matter and evil drawn out of Plato and that of matter and non-being drawn out of Aristotle. Thus in Plotinus evil can exist only by participating more or less in non-being. In Plotinus non-being becomes the very principle of evil, since evil participates scarcely at all in the good which is 59

beyond being. Non-being is evil, approaching more and more evil, as it more and more approaches the matter of undifferentiated diversity and nultiplicity. Non-being represents a further and further departure from the one and from the absolute beyond-being purity of the good. But typical of the enigmatic thought of Plotinus, not only does evil participate in non-being · as being becomes more and more material, but non-being participates in evil as well. Thus Plotinus describes non-being as but an image (eikon, a phantom, a semblance) of being. This means that no matter how material a thing may become, no matter how much it may participate in absolute evil, it can never do so completely. Non-being always retains at least a semblance of being, and hence of the good from which being flows. Nothing can ever fully participate in this principle of absolute evil, but only to a limited extent. 23 In Plotinus one can see three lines of Greek thought converging. He modifies Parmenides' stark opposition between being and non­ being, in accordance with the Platonic notion of participation. Being can participate in non-being ; and non-being, in being. From Aristotle he takes the notion that matter, now through Plato identified with evil, cannot exist actually, but only potentially. This means that no matter how material things may become, that is, approach evil and non-being ; because non-being ever retains a semblance of being (and hence also of the good from which being emanates) , those material things can never fully participate in absolute evil. The doctrine of Plotinus that matter always retains some semblance of being, and hence of the good, mitigates what would otherwise be a sterile dualism between good and evil. Without this mitigating factor the beautiful flow of Plotinian emanation would degenerate into a tedious and unproductive dialectic between two eternally warring principles of good and evil. From this fact one may see how Plotinus' thought assisted St. Augustine is overcoming philosophically the persistent dualism o f Manichaeism.

7.

AUGUSTINE

With Christianity non-being did not disappear from the meta­ physical scene. In fac.t, as 'nothing' (nihil) non-being becomes that which 'existed' before all things were created out of nothing (nihil) . Again, the philosophical backdrop of Parmenides' thought should be apparent. Parmenides insisted that any coming-to-be, that is,

60

any created being, could come only from non-being. But since non­ being does not exist, clearly nothing could come from it. St. Augustine, in his Concerning the Nature of Good, Against th� Mani­ chaeans, ch. 18, argues that God could not have created the universe from the pre-existent substance of himself, or else there would have to be a change in the unchangeable. But although everything that is, is from God, it is not of God, but 'of nothing.' These things could not derive from something pre-existent (for example, Aristotle's undifferentiated matter) , since everything is from God. And this formless, qualityless material could not be evil either, since even if it did exist, it would have its existence from God and hence would be good.24 Hence, creation had to be ex nihilo. There could be literally nothing pre-existing before God made created things. One must bear in mind the way in which the Greeks looked upon the world to appreciate the fundamental difference between the Greek view and that of Christianity. If one studies the texts of the Greek philosophers from Anaximander to Plotin us he encounters a view of the world or cosmos as finite. To be infinite, for the Greeks, is to be indefinite and indeterminate. It is to be a 'chaos ;' it is to be nothing. Thus even Anaximander's 'infinite' or 'unlimited' is , in effect, finite and limited, since what goes out from and returns to this unlimited source for all things always remains constant in quantity ; even though as the source for all things it remains quantitatively inexhaustible. Being is finite also for Parmenides. As he says, if being is finite, it is in need of nothing. But if it were infinite, it would be in need of everything.25 This is a very instructive passage for gauging the difference between the Greek and Christian views of infinity. The Christian thinker would undoubtedly say exactly the opposite : if something (for example, God) is infinite, it is in need of nothing ; but if finite, it is in need of everything. A similar situation obtains with the question of the eternity of the world for the Greeks. For them · there was no need to ask where the world came from. As Parmenides put the matter, it never was, nor will it be, but is now. The Greeks took the world as pres­ ently existing, and because it exists it has a certain necessity to exist. As Parmenides had put the matter, ' . . . it is not possible for it not to be.' 26 It is, in effect, eternal. Such a notion of 'eternity,' however, differs radically from that introduced by Christianity, particularly as it came to be applied to God. Christianity insisted that God was eternal; he always was and always will be. This is very different from saying that he never was, and never will be, but

61

is now. And it would be instructive to trace these two very different notions of eternity as applied to God throughout the course of Christian philosophy, and in relation to the question of the eternity of the world. 8.

ANSELM

When we come to St. Anselm it is necessary to bear in mind the sources he had at his disposal. He had Augustine, which means that anything he had of Plato and Plotinus regarding non-being had been largely strained through St. Augustine. Similarly, he had only the logical works of Aristotle at his disposal in Latin; hence, not the Physics or the Metaphysics or the De Generatione et Corruptione. Thus on the theme that we are here considering St. Anselm can be read mainly as a fuller explication of St. Augustine. In chapters VII and VIII of the Monologion St. Anselm inquires whether the whole class of beings which exist through another derive their existence from any material. He has already used nothing and the principle 'From nothing comes nothing' to show that the Supreme Nature cannot derive its existence from nothing or through nothing, through something or through itself, since that something would then have to exist prior to itself. But what of material things ? Certainly they cannot derive their existence materially from the supreme Essence, and since they derive their existence from no material - for that which does not exist at all cannot be the material for anything - the supreme Essence had to produce everything from nothing. What St. Anselm is doing, in a more explicit fashion than St. Augustine, is to reject entirely the identification between matter and non-being, which had been made by Aristotle. This becomes clear when he next asks whether this nothing is not then a cause ? His answer is that this would be true only if nothing were something. And if nothing is something, then the supreme Substance, conceived as something, becomes nothing. St. Anselm then analyses the three possible meanings of nothing. The first is that nothing was, in fact, created. The second is that what was created was produced from nothing itself (de nihilo ipso), as though it were actually some­ thing. He rejects both of these possibilities. The third possibility is to understand material things as created from (de) nothing, but that there was not anything whence (unde) they were created. Those things which before were nothing are now something. 2 7

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9·

THOMAS AQUINAS

For St. Thomas non-being continues to perform essentially the same metaphysical function that it did in Augustine and Anselm ; except that in Christian theology it is now used in the theological formulation of the divine creation of the world. It is not a pre­ existent something which somehow existed before created things came to be. Nor is it an eternally existing, purely potential matter. For St. Thomas, as for Augustine and Anselm before him, even the ' unqualified matter' of Aristotle, what St. Thomas calls materia prima, had to be created by God., 28 St'. Thomas further insists upon the absolute non-existence of this nothing. It does not exist in any way, even potentially. And St. Thomas makes no distinction between non-being and nothing, which might allow nothing some sort of existence. 2 9 As a matter of fact, St. Thomas could investigate no further the meaning of this nihil, since already in his short work On Being and Essence he had said that privations do not have an essence, and hence cannot be investigated as to their being. But nothing continues to play a role in St. Thomas' thought which follows upon the Plotinian identification of evil and non­ being. As we saw with Plotinus, each participates with the other because of the identification which Plato made between matter and evil and Aristotle between matter and non-being. The Christian thinkers we have noted thus far tended to break down Aristotle's identification of a pre-existent matter and non-being in favor of the J udaeo-Christian notion of creation, understood as ex nihilo . And if God's creation was conceived as good, they had to deny equally the Platonic identification between matter and evil. But something of the identifications made by Plotinus survived, namely that between evil and non-being. Thus St. Thomas says that no being may be said to be evil insofar as it is a being, but rather insofar as it lacks some being. 30 This lack or privation is a kind of evil ; and to the extent that the thing lacks a certain good or per­ fection, that is, being, it participates to some extent in non-being. And in his Sitmma Contra Gentiles, III, 1 1 , St. Thomas simply states that a privation is non-being, even though its subject is a substance which is a being. With St. Thomas, primarily a theologian, the role which nothing or non-being plays is basically a theological one, though its ultimate meaning and roots clearly stretch back to an older and philosophical tradition. 63

I O . LEIBNIZ

A theological tone can als� be heard in the celebrated question of Leibniz, 'Why is there somethipg rather than nothing ?' In his Principles of Nature and of Grace, #7, he continues, 'For nothing is simpler and easier than something.' The question 'Why is there not nothing ?' sounds odd for two reasons. First, it seems to fly in the face of the facts; and secondly, in the face of the very pos­ sibility of questioning. For there must obviously be 'something,' for example, a questioner, for the question even to be asked. Finally, to say that nothing is simpler and easier than something presupposes a great deal of Leibniz' own philosophy, namely the maximum complexity of compossible perfections actually and neces­ sarily existing. For St. Thomas, of course, the question of the 'reason why' for created things could reside only in the will of God, opaque and inscrutable to human reason. 31 And although the question may seem to be the most fundamental and most pressing question that metaphysics might ask, Leibniz at any rate, has a ready answer to the question in what he calls the 'great principle,' namely that of sufficient reason. It reads, 'Nothing takes place without a sufficient reason.' The reason why there is something rather than nothing is because being or existence means perfection, and for this there is more than sufficient reason. For though nothing may be simpler and easier than something, it is not more perfect; non-existence would lack every possible perfection, even the most basic, namely that of existence. Leibniz retains one of the traditional meanings of nothing, namely its connection with evil understood as a privation of some­ thing good, and hence of being. He points to this meaning among the Platonists and in St. Augustine. 32 Since Leibniz understands being as perfection, he does have the problem of explaining the origin of the privation of good (and hence of being) which evil would represent. He does this by saying that the origin of things derives from two sources, from God and from nothing. 33 This might appear to represent a variation on Manichaeism. But in his Theodicy Leibniz insists that the source of evil cannot be found in a matter pre-existent with God, since this matter would also derive from a good God. It must b..e found, in his view, in an 'original imper­ fection in the creature,' the fact that it is limited in its essence. 34 In other words, for Leibniz non-being is the source of limitation for all finite and created things. The important metaphysical

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function performed by non-being in this context should be clear. It is the ultimate source of evil, but only because it is the source for all limitation in the being of finite and created things. I I . KANT

At the end of his appendix to the 'Concepts of Reflection' in his Critique of Pure Reason Kant expressly treats the problem of nothing. 35 In many ways this is the first time in the history of Western metaphysics since Parmenides that the problem of nothing and non-being is specifically brought out into the open. Kant distinguishes between four meanings of the world. Noth­ ing means, first of all, the object of a concept to which no assignable intuition at all corresponds, for example, the noumenal 'thing in itself.' It is a mere fiction (an ens rationis) , even though it is not a self-contradictory concept. As he says earlier, there is a null and void character (Nichtigkeit) attached to any and every conclusion about non-sensible objects. 36 Or again, since man's intuition is sensible and not intellectual (which for Kant represents a knowledge of the noumenal 'thing in itself.' and is possessed only by God), something not given in the space-time forms of sensible intuition, could be for us only a nothing (Nichts). 3 7 Secondly, nothing is negation, a concept of the absence of an obj ect. It is a nihil privativum; for example, blindness or the lack of light for the possibility of seeing. Thirdly, nothing is an empty intuition without an object. This he calls ens imaginarium, and exemplifies it by saying that if extended beings were not perceived we could have no representation of space. Lastly, nothing is an empty object without a concept, a nihil negativum, for example, a square-circle. From this it may be seen that Heidegger is not entirely correct when he says that there is no nothing (Nichts) in Kant, but only negation. Negation is merely the second meaning of nothing in Kant. In Heidegger's view this is a 'nothing' only in the sense that it is something 'without a what. ' 3 8 But there is something much deeper at issue here, and we must attempt to search it out if we are to find the 'real' nothing in Kant. His nothing, I think, must be located in the important distinction which Kant draws between thinking (denken) and knowing (erken­ nen).39 It is this distinction which is the dividing line between speculative and practical reason for Kant, and hence at the heart of his whole way of doing philosophy. For the noumenal 'thing in 65

itself, ' though it can be thought by speculative reason, cannot be known. It can give nothing in the way of knowledge. Concepts, such as freedom, soul, God, which are true for practical reason, postulated by necessity for morfl,l philosophy, mean nothing to speculative reason. Conversely, the speculative truth of the concepts of the understanding (for example, cause and effect, substance, and so forth) means nothing, that i�,- have no bearing upon the practical order of free moral activity. The distinction which Kant makes between the speculative and practical order is sharply made. There is the unbridgeable abyss of nothing between the two orders. They are not merely two different ways of looking at the same world; they are two distinct worlds. As Kant says, the first begins at the place which I take in the exter­ nal world of sense. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and opens up to me an entirely different world of moral possibility. 4 0 For Kant these two worlds must be, and yet they cannot be, connected. And it is here that the true nature of nothing in Kant's thought is to be found. So far as speculative reason is concerned the world of the practical reason is nothing; it cannot be known. And so far as practical reason is concerned the world of speculative reason is nothing ; it is not touched by that world. Neither exi_sts for the other. Between these two worlds is the yawning abyss of nothing. Almost every thinker after Kant was convinced that the dichotomy set between the phenomenal and noumenal world was incorrect. Kant had made the distinction largely in order to pre­ serve the practical truth of free moral action in the face of the speculative truth of a deterministic Newtonian physics. Hence, each thinker after Kant had to figure some way around this dichotomous distinction, while preserving the truth that it contained. One could, of course, merely obliterate the 'nothing' dividing the two worlds. But in Western metaphysics, at any rate, non-being is like a balloon; if pushed out of one place, it bulges out somewhere else. 12. FICHTE

Fichte leveled his attack against the Kantian philosophy at the weak point of this 'nothing.' He argued, against Kant, that there had to be an 'intellectual intuition' to oversee the operations of the speculative and practical reasons, in order to direct which of the two reasons was to be used, and when. Thus in his Wissen-

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scha/tslehre (1794) , and even more strongly in his second introduction to that work (1797), Fichte argued that every fact of consciousness was necessarily an act, a ' deed-act' (Tathandlung). 4 1 Only through such an independent ego could there be a unity of the two worlds of the sensible and the intelligible necessary for ethical law-making. 42 As Fichte puts it, only through the immediate consciousness of the intellectual intuition can I grasp that by which I know something, because I actually do it. 43 Fichte insists that without full and com­ plete self-consciousness the distinction between the speculative and practical reason could not be made in. the first place . It would be beside the point to repeat the whole of Fichte 's brilliant argument in the Wissenschaftslehre. But certain high points must be reviewed if Fichte's nothing is to be uncovered. The absolute ego posits itself as absolute . To this is op-posited an ab­ solute non-ego ; a world. But these two absolutes would cancel each other out if both were posited and opposited absolutely, and con­ sciousness (which is a fact) would then be rendered impossible . Fichte surmises that both ego and non-ego must be posited and opposited in a divided or finite fashion. 44 The self, then, is finite ; and the self opposits to itself a world which is also finite. The finite non-ego, as Fichte says, is a 'negative quantity. ' This, along with the limited and finite character of the ego, makes essentially possible what is termed the moral idealism of Fichte. There is progress possible both for the finite ego, which is incomplete, as well as for the finite non-ego of the world, which is also incomplete . This means, further, that it is both possible and necessary to transform the world in such a way that it may be made over into a proper instrument for the self-perfection of man. It is, then, the 'negative quantities, ' the 'relative nothings' both within and without the person, which are to be filled in and filled out , that make both moral and world progress possible. In the philos­ ophy of Fichte non-being becomes the 'task, ' and it is human freedom which, in positing itself finitely and in oppositing an equally finite world, renders possible the fulfillment of the task . There is the personal moral task of self-realization. But there is also the task of attempting to reform nature, which resists the moral effort, into an apt instrument for this personal and moral self-realization. Being for Fichte is progress; non-being, the task at hand. 13. SCHELLING

Particularly m his earlier works Schelling was strongly m-

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fluenced by Fichte's forcefully conceived system. But though there is much talk about ego and nop-ego, freedom, etc. , Schelling saw in the non-ego (nature) something more than the necessary element of resistance to the moral task of th� ego's self-realization. Whereas in Fichte the absolute ego and the absolute non-ego were seen as canceling each other out, if they were to be posited absolutely - thereby destroying the possibility of consciousness in Schelling, because these two are absolutes identical with them­ selves, they must also be identical with each other. Hence, there is not a finite ego and a finite non-ego, but one absolute ego, and absolutely everything is in the ego. This is clearly brought out in a fragment, Introduction to Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797-1803) , in which the absolutely ideal is identified with the absolutely real. With this identification both the subjective and the objective find themselves joined in the identity of the absolute. 45 And absolutely everything, from Kant's 'things in themselves' to the two sides of the absolute, namely subject and object, must be included in the one knowledge-act (Erkenntnisakt) of the Absolute. 46 And outside the Absolute there would be literally nothing. It is, of course, true that there are subject and object aspects to the Absolute; but since these reside in a unity of absolute identity they cannot really (realiter) be distinguished from one another, but only from the point of view of appearance. 4 7 What Schelling had done, in effect, was to shift the emphasis of German idealism away from a non-ego conceived as resistant to the moral progress of the individual, as the necessary stimulus to the moral task, to a non-ego understood as the whole of nature, conceived in the all-encompassing totality of the Absolute. One might see in this merely a return, beyond Fichte and Kant, to a Parmenidean problematic. In actual fact, one need trace the lines of influence back no further than such thinkers as Spinoza, Giordano Bruno, Nicolas of Cusa, and Jacob Bohme. It might seem that Schelling made no essentially new contri­ bution to the history of nothing that we have here been sketching. It is, of course, true that Schelling asks the Leibnizian question, 'Why is there not nothing; why is there anything at all ?' 4 8 And it is also true that the question is a more serious one than it was in the case of Leibniz. Leibniz was merely toying with the question. He had the principle of sufficient reason and a notion of being as necessary (and self-producing) perfection to preserve him from any acute philosophical embarassment. But Schelling's question is

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more serious : 'Why is there not simply nothing ? ' And since the Absolute includes absolutely everything, subject and object, 'things in themselves,' God, and so forth, Schelling is even wondering why there should be a God at all. Schelling had, in effect, dissolved Kant's carefully erected, but sand-built, wall between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds in the ocean of the absolute identification of subject and object. But if outside the Absolute there was absolutely nothing, then the ques­ tion could be asked, instead of the Absolute why is there not just plain nothing ? 1 4 - HEGEL

It was exactly this all encompassing Absolute which blurred over every differentiation within itself that Hegel attacked most vigorously. Hegel found in Schelling's Absolute a night in which all cows are black. 4 9 Thus in his 'Shorter Logic' Hegel characterizes the infinity in which nothing can be distinguished from anything else as a 'bad or negative infinity. ' It denied and continued to deny the finite, hoping thereby to generate the infinite. But the finite keeps coming back, and can never be so easily by-passed. One might think that the finite really ought to be overcome and assimilated into the infinite, but it is not. And the reason is that a constant opposition is set up between finite and infinite, each eternally recalling the other, such that a true infinity is never attained. 5 0 When Hegel comes to treat of being, he also finds it necessary to treat of nothing. For he finds that being is as empty and as indeterminate as is nothing. In their undifferentiated vagueness they dissolve into each other. But although they are the same (dasselbe), they are not identical. As Hegel puts it cryptically, 'The one is not what the other is. ' 51 He observes that he is merely speaking abstractly when he declares that they are the same. But there is something that gives subsistence both to being and to non-being, and that is becoming. In becoming, being and non-being exist as distinct from each other; for becoming is both to-be and not-to-be, the unity of these two. But if they subsist wholly in each other, they do not subsist in themselves. In other words, being and non-being vanish in becoming because of the necessary inner contradiction in becoming's internal make-up. 52 As he says, 'They are, therefore, in this unity : but only as disappearing and transcended. ' 53 Becoming, then, constitutes being and non­ being as distinct. But since in becoming, being and non-being ever 69

vanish into each other, the disappearance of being and non-being, which constitutes becoming, causes becoming to disappear as well. As he says, 'Their disappearance therefore is the disappearance of becoming, or the disappearance of disappearance itself. ' 54 In other words, becoming alone can differentiate between being and non-being. But it can make being and non-being exist separately only by synthesizing them. In synthesizing them it dissolves them, because each goes into the other, since both are equally empty and indeterminate. And when becoming causes being and non-being to dissolve, becoming is itself dissolved, since it is constituted by being and non-being. Becoming comes to be determinate being. 'Becoming is a baseless unrest which collapses into a static result. ' 55 And this static result is existence or determi­ nate being (Dasein). For in order to have the !disappearance of disappearance, something must disappear ; and this something which will not disappear in the disappearance of disappearance is deter­ minate being. Hegel is a master magician. Not only can he make something disappear, he can make the disappearing act itself disappear. But he is able to perform such magical metaphysical tricks only from the elevated stage of absolute knowledge, a position of abstract and absolute security. This is indicated by the view which Hegel takes of being. Indistinguishable from nothing, being is simply the concept or notion of being, entirely empty. Similarly, the becoming which dissolves being and non-being, and is in turn dissolved, has nothing whatever to do with time. It is a purely abstract and eternal becoming whose appearance and disappearance is dictated only by moments of abstract dialectic. 1 5 . N IETZSCHE

There are those who might question 'Nietzsche's inclusion within the company of philosophers. But if there is a history of nothing or non-being paralleling that of being, then Nietzsche's metaphysics of nothing, his nihilism, cannot be ignored. It cannot be ignored for another reason. A small group of contemporary theologians take Nietzsche's famous statement ' God is dead', in the preface to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as the starting point for a 'radical' theology. One..can, indeed, interpret Nietzsche as a prophet who saw that God was largely absent from the Christianity of his day. But Nietzsche can be interpreted in many different ways. 56 One might say, for example, that Nietzsche's nihilism is the nothing 70

that is left over after the death of God. It is the nothing which, in the absence of all values and ideals, creates a moral vacuum in which man must create his own values. As Nietzsche says, Christian morality is true if God is; it stands or falls with faith in God. But Nietzsche's nihilism is also the nothing of an unfreedom which arises when man is forced to create his own values, and when he is forced to accept the grinding wheel of an eternal recurrence of the same thing. With the death of the God which man had posited transcen­ dentally beyond himself, man must create a self beyond the self. He must create the Superman. ·'For Nietzsche the Christian God was intellectually little more than the transcendent One and Good of Plato. But if this God should die, the intended result of Nietzsche's 'inverted Platonism, ' then man himself must become the transcen­ dent. Man must become lord of all. But here the pessimistic ele­ ment in Nietzsche enters. Nietzsche doubts that man is prepared to assume the absolute lordship of the earth; he doubts that man as he has existed until now is capable of going beyond the animal and the all-too-human. In many ways the thought of Nietzsche would seem to have brought metaphysics full circle. Parmenides found one 'thing' for which there is no opposite, namely being; for non-being does not exist. Nietzsche found one 'thing,' namely a non-existent God, which could now no longer pose the greatest objection to existence. 5 7 But when God is subtracted from existence, and man is unable to add up to superman, the final sum could only be zero, a nihil which is both moral and ontological. This moral and ontological character of Nietzsche's nihilism has been characteristic of nothing throughout its history. But with Nietzsche the nothing of evil, and even the nothing of being, disappear into nothing. It would appear that the history of nothing, which began with Parmenides and disappeared in Hegel, and even more definitively in Nietzsche, had come to an end. But nothing can no more be buried than it can be killed. 16. SARTRE

In many ways Sartre's view of nothing might have been in­ cluded immediately after that of Fichte. For when Sartre views freedom as the ' inner structure of consciousness,' closely identifying freedom and consciousness, he might be seen as repeating the 'deed-act' of Fichte. Similarly, when Sartre looks upon the essence

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of man as his freedom, 5 8 or when he insists that there must be obstacles to one's freedom, opstacles to be overcome, if man is to be free; 5 9 or when he draws the same sort of distinction between the en soi (in itself) and the po'14!r soi (for itself) as Fichte draws between the an sich and the fur sich, one quickly becomes aware of the similarites. And yet, there is a fundamental dissimilarity in their viewpoints. For Sartre may be seen to give a pessimistic twist to Fichte's optimistic moral idealism. For Sartre also non-being is the task, but it is a grim task. For ' . . . man is always separated from what he is by all the breadth of the being that he is not.' 5 9a As he says, 'I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it. ' 6 0 Man is his own nothingness, and hence it is through man that nothingness comes into the world. There is no annihilation without man. Nothingness cannot nihilate itself. It can be nihilated only by man, by a being which, through its freedom, is able to project its various possibilities out into its own future and freely nihilate them. Man nihilates nothingness in his own being, and hence it is through man · that nothingness enters the world. But there is a fundamental difference between Fichte and Sartre over the question of the locale of nothing. In the first place, for Sartre the nothingness which is nihilated through freedom must be absolute, in accordance with a freedom that is absolute. Whereas in Fichte the nothing of the 'negative quantity' in the self is finite and limited. But an even more fundamental difference lies in the different way they view the 'in itself.' For Fichte the 'in itself' is also finite and limited, and this makes possible his moral idealism. Progress is possible because both man and the world can be completed. In Sartre, on the other hand, the world of the 'in itself' is absolutely full. In fact, it is too much (de trop); it is too full. And the self is absolutely empty, to be filled in through its absolute, self-nihilating freedom. In other words, Fichte divides non-being in two, thereby making possible self-perfection and the perfection of nature in accordance with p0ssible self-perfection. Sartre makes nature essentially full (and 'nauseous' for that reason) , and requires an absolute freedom to handle the absolute nothingness within the self. Hence, instead of the moral idealism of Fichte, in Sartre one finds a moral pessimism. Non-being is not merely a task ; it is a grim task. For if the self introduces the nothingness which it nihilates through its absolute freedom, then the self is totally re­ sponsible for what it does. The self is freedom, and it creates its

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own essence by its existence. Freedom thus becomes full of dread and anguish because of the total, complete, and irrevocable respon­ sibility it has for its own creations. And man is condemned to this dreadful freedom, without the help of any guides or established values, and yet with the terrifying realization of total responsibility. Sartre's moral pessimism ends in moral despair. I J. HEI DEGGER

To follow strict chronologic�l order it would be necessary to treat Heidegger's notion of nothing prior to that of Sartre. However, beyond the nothing which is, for Heidegger revealed in the phenom­ enon of anxiety, 6 1 opening one up to being as a whole; and besides the 'nothing' which Heidegger uses to characterize being so far as the scientist is concerned, 62 there is another and even more signifi­ cant nothing, which develops in the later philosophy of Heidegger. And this is what he calls the 'ontological difference.' It is 'the Not' (das Nicht) between being and thing. 63 For no one thing is being, and being is not a thing. It is the ignoring of this fundamental ontological distinction between being and thing which has been responsible for that unfortunate occurrence which Heidegger at­ tempts to describe historically as the 'forgetting ot being,' which is responsible for the 'nihilism' of Western metaphysics. 64 This forgetting of the distinction between being and thing distracts metaphysics from the search after being, in favor of searching out the 'highest thing' or the 'thingliness' (Seiendheit) of things. 65 In forgetting the difference between thing and being, traditional metaphysics turned being into just another thing, and thus proceeded to forget being. But when one attempts to think about the 'essence' of being from the point of view of things, being becomes nothing. This is, in Heidegger's view, the origin of the nihilism which has plagued Western metaphysics from Plato to Nietzsche. This nihilism is founded upon the forgetting of being, which, in turn, is founded upon the failure to make the ontological distinction between being and thing, that is, the failure to recognize the nothing between being and thing. From this brief, and by no means comprehensive, treatment of the history of nothing, it may be clear that although Parmenides forever rejected nothing from the premises of philosophy and meta­ physics - since, as he said, it can neither be recognized nor spoken

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about - philosophers since Parmenides have continued to recognize and speak about nothing. They have used in it a wide varity of ways and for various physical, metaphysical, epistemological, and moral functions . These uses all too easily escape notice, because nothing would naturally be one of the easiest 'things' to disguise. But these uses are by no means insignificant. Not only are they often revelatory of the philosopher's view of being, but also they are revelatory of his place in the history of being. For just as there is a history of being, so is there a history of nothing ; and possibly one of the reasons philosophers give to nothing philosophical functions lies in the fact that there may be a sense in which nothing may be said to exist. Parmenides may be correct in saying that nothing does not exist, but does it then follow that it is impossible for it to exist ? For to say that non-being cannot be means that the converse, that being must be, must also be true. And there are at least three philosophers (Leibniz, Schelling, and He�degger) who, in asking the question 'Why is being ; why is there not nothing ?', would seem to have serious doubts about the absolute necessity of being. And if being is not absolutely necessary, theh there may well be one sense in which nothing may be said to exist.

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CHAPTER IV

NOTHING

I. THINGS AND TIME

One might, of course, ask why time should have become the burning philosophical question that it did in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century. And the answer is not far to seek. It lies in one word, evolution. For evolutionary theory introduced a new concept of change. Time could no longer be understood as merely based upon motion, as it had been understood in the West since the philosophy of Aristotle. Nor could it receive the essentially psychologic,a l interpretation given to it by St. Augustine. Time was to be understood in terms of the long periods of time necessary for evolutionary change ; and this was a very different sort of change from that previously met with by philosophers. This new situation tended to produce two things. In the first place, evolutionary theory introduced a new kind of change, what might be called in an older terminology 'change in essence or nature. ' In the process of fertilization things could be made to take on characteristics so essentially different from those of their progenitors that one could speak not simply in terms of changes taking place in primary substance, to use Aristotle's distinction, but even in secondary substance. In the second place, the type of time indicated by evolutionary change was not only longer, it was also linear, as distinguished from the time established by the closed systems of periodic motion, . This meant, further, that the consideration of time moved out of what had been called 'physics' and into metaphysics . It was , of course, true that once something was 'born' (natum) a certain way, that is, had a certain nature, that change could take place only within certain limits ; nevertheless, the fact that essential changes in a

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species could take place tended to take the problem out of the hands of the 'natural philosopher, ' �nd put it squarely in the lap of the metaphysician. The further application of the model of evolutionary change to the realm of philosophy ..made even more acute the problem of historical and ethical relativism for the philosophers. They were forced to come to terms with this new kind of time in relation to being, or to revise radically the traditional views of truth and value. With his phenomenological analyses in Being and Time Heideg­ ger attempted to exhibit the fundamental temporality of Dasein, the being whose 'here' makes 'there's' possible. The being of Dasein emerges as the temporality of a stretch between his relating and unrelating to being. From this analysis Heidegger hoped to establish the meaning of being itself as temporal. To the student of German philosophy this approach is not entirely unexpected. In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant had insisted upon the close con­ nection between the form of inner sense, namely time, and the transcendental ego. 1 Thus it also comes as no surprise that Heideg­ ger should say that things understood by Dasein are understood temporally, that is, against the horizon of temporality. There is, of course, an important difference in the way the two philosophers, Heidegger and Kant, understand this 'time.' For Kant time is essentially 'vertical' ; it is the a priori form for each sensible in­ tuition given at any time, and for the possibility of its being given at all. For Heidegger, however, temporality is more 'horizontal'; it is a horizon, a backdrop against which things existing in time can be understood. But although it may be true that the being of Dasein is tem­ poral, and although it may be equally true that Dasein can under­ stand things only in a temporal fashion, this does not necessarily mean that those things actually are temporal. Similarly, one may show that the being of Dasein is temporal; but this does not neces­ sarily mean that being itself is temporal, for' there is more to being than the being of Dasein. For example, there is the being of things. And the fact that Dasein cannot understand things except as temporal does not, again, necessarily mean that the being of those things is temporal as well. To approach this question in a proper fashion we must consider first the temporality of the thing. Then it may be possible to determine whether th..e being of the thing is temporal or not. We say, for example, that things are subject to the ravages of time. This metaphorical way of speaking points to the fact that bodies affect each other, resist each other, fight each other, wear

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each other down, and wear away. And this occurs over a period of time. Time may also be understood as annexed to persons, things, and events. It takes time to go through bodies. Or if it is impossible to go through them, it takes time to go around them. And because it takes time to go through and around bodies, things need time to do the things they have to do, to get to the places they have to go, etc. But this is an essentially superficial view of time, based upon the necessity of motion in a world in which things often do, and even must move. But why do they actually move,� and why must they move ? If we return to the meaning of {he thing, namely as the essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon, we note immediately that the singular is used. The relation between the phenomenon of the thing and the noumenon of the thing is singular and particular. One might, of course, object that the thing has more than one appearance, showing one aspect to me at one time, another to someone else at the same time. However, if the appearance is primarily the thing's and not mine or someone else's - and this appearance would have to be the thing's before it could be mine or someone else's - then the singularity of its relation between phenomenon and noumenon remains primary. The thing is self­ identical with itself. This self-identity of the thing with itself is neither phenomenal nor noumenal, but relational. And the thing tends to retain this relation of self-identity. It constantly attempts to hold itself together. Things naturally tend to pull together and stay together, rather than pull apart. They tend to keep and hold their self-identity. Force and energy must be employed to tear things apart and keep them apart. There is, however, another factor which enters here, and that is the phenomenal, the appearance of the thing among other ap­ pearing things. This means that if the thing is to continue in ap­ pearance, it must act and react to situations which might otherwise render impossible its continuance in appearance. As we have seen, for man the mediation of the existential is necessarily required. But the same is true of any living thing. The living thing must adapt itself to the situation in which it finds itself, if it is to continue to remain self-identical with itself, and continue to appear among appearing things. And since the thing is the appearance of being, it must constantly appear, and the mediation of the existential is involved right from the beginning. Nature (being) may hide itself, as Heraclitus suggested, but the thing cannot do so entirely. The only way it can fail to appear is in its

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own disappearance. And its break-up, its being torn apart, this it resists at every cost. The same is true, to a certain extent, of the non-living thing. The stone is also something self-identical with itself and something that appears and persists in appearance. It tends to preserve its self-identity with itself, and a great deal of energy or force must be used to tear it apart. However, through the application of such external energy and force the non-living thing can be made to appear with more or less rapidity, that is, over a shorter or longer period of time. There are, then, two 'pressures' operating upon the thing: its tendency to preserve its self-identical relation with itself, and its necessity to appear. And it can continue to appear only if it continues to retain its self-identical relation with itself. In dis­ appearance it appears totally, and the relation collapses. By the same token, the thing can remain self-identical with itself only if it continues to appear among other appearing things. This is because of the necessarily phenomenal aspect of the thing, one of the poles of that relation; but it is also because of the other pole of that relation, the noumenal relation of separation with being. This is why, when the appearance of the non-living thing is speeded up until it is rendered total, the thing in losing its relation of sepa­ ration to being can only cease to appear among appearing things. For things represent the appearance of being, and they cease to appear once they have lost this relation to being. Their necessary appearance has been speeded up into disappearance. This means that the direction of the non-living thing which continues in appearance is always in the direction of the phenom­ enal. This would explain why non-living things tend to wear out and wear away. They do not simply wear out 'on the outside, ' so to speak; they wear out externally only because, as a whole, both internally and externally, they are forced to appear more or less slowly, but more and more completely. This will account for the ultimate causality which modern physics has always attributed to the world of the atomic and the subatomic in relation to the world of macroscopic bodies. The apparent passivity of the thing must not, however, lead us to believe that it is timeless. It must continue, constantly, to appear among appearing things, if it is to remain self-identical with itself, and if it is to pr..eserve its relation to being. Similarly, it must remain self-identical with itself if it is to continue in appearance. This necessary continuance in appearance implies a constant move­ ment, whether 'normal' or somehow accelerated, of the non-living

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thing from the noumenal in the direction of the phenomenal. This is the basis for time in the thing. This time may be measured in milliseconds. Time is, nonetheless, required for the non-living thing to manifest itself phenomenally. It is this that makes the thing 'present.' It makes it present both in the sense of a here, and in the sense of a now. The thing has a 'here,' or a certain vertical depth, because of the necessary relation of self-identity which it must possess in order to appear. In the thing this is the basis for its space, a space which the thing, whether living or non-living, ever attempts to retain as its own. But this vertical depth to the 'here,' and its necessary appear­ ance, tends to throw the thing out onto a horizontal plane. The horizon of time is produced by the necessity of the thing to continue in appearance, that is, by the necessity to move from the noumenal to the phenomenal. The thing is time-bound because it is time­ producing, productive of its own time. The basis for time in living things is different from that in non-living things. The basis for time in living things is self-adap­ tation. There is a certain element of adaptation in non-living things, due to the necessity of constant appearance in order to preserve self-identity. But in the case of the living thing, that adaptation must be self-adaptation. The difference between these two types of adaptation lies in the factor of knowledge, no matter how simple or primitive that 'knowledge' may be. For the living thing is able to 'sense' its own possible noumenal nothing and react accordingly. The movement between the noumenal and the phenomenal is not simply in one direction, as is the appearance of the self-identical non-living thing. In the case of the living thing the movement between the phenomenal and the noumenal operates in two direc­ tions. The living thing can 'sense' the danger to its continuance in appearance among appearing things, unless it reacts, changes, and re-adj usts itself to the new situation or environmental conditions. The movement between the phenomenal and the noumenal in the living thing is in two directions. The necessity to continue in appearance to preserve the relation of self-identity can be 'sensed' as somehow in jeopardy. The information of the possible noumenal nothing ahead on the horizontal life-span can be transferred in the direction of the vertically noumenal, where an internal reaction can take place. This internal readjustment in relation to the exter­ nal state of affairs can then be transferred again to the phenomenal where a corresponding re-adaptation in terms of continued appear-

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ance can be essayed. This is what is meant by the possibility of self­ adaptation in living things. And it is this process which produces the time of the living thing and the more complex set of structures and functions that can be developed in living things. There is another fundamental difference between the living and the non-living thing; and it has to do with the question of energy. The continuance in appearance on the part of the non­ living thing depends upon the expenditure of energy, which results from the movement from the noumenal to the phenomenal neces­ sary for continued appearance. In the case of living things, on the other hand, energy (at least in a potential form) must be taken in or consumed from that provided by non-living things in order for the living thing to continue to appear among appearing things as some­ thing self-identical with itself. The living thing's continuance in appearance requires energy so that it can itself appear. Only then can its adaptation be self-adaptation, that is, as a result of self­ assimilation. Again, within living things the time that is required for these movements from the phenomenal to the noumenal, and from the noumenal to the phenomenal vary. They .can also be speeded up or slowed down in a wide variety of different ways. But time is neces­ sarily involved in, and based upon, the type of self-adjustment which living things make in view of the preservation of self-identity in continued appearance. And any adaptation or adjustment made by the individual living being must be self-adaptation and self­ adjustment. There are, of course, differences among living things. Thus an animal has a more complex organic structure enabling it to indulge in a wider variety of self-adaptation. For example, it possesses a memory and a certain type of learning. And there are, of course, advantages to more versatile modes of self-adaptation. But there are also disadvantages attached to the very organic complexity which makes possible the greater variety and versatility of the self-adaptive response. For the greater the �omplexity, the more delicate the balance of life in the organism, the more tenuous the relation of separation between the thing and being. Thus when we come to man, the type of self-adaptive response becomes even broader and more versatile. For because of his awareness of time, and his awareness of his being as one transub­ jective to himself as a subject, man is able to adapt himself beyond the immediate here and now of presently appearing things. Through an understanding that is projective he can fashion for himself a

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world of instruments and institutions which pre-adapt the world of nature to him and for him. Man's proj ective understanding not only stands among things in the present ; it is able to stand between the present and the future. Man can say what will happen and make things happen in a way that they would not otherwise happen , i n accordance with the plans and designs that he has projected. Nevertheless, this projective understanding into the future stand does not escape the reaches of time. It must involve time, if man's adaptation to things in a time-bound world would be possible. Man's under-standing is always a stp.nding among and between things ; and this is true even when he stands between his own past and the future of his projective understanding stand among things. 2 . TIME AND BEING

As we have seen, man is able to escape the reaches of time in at least some of his knowing. In fact, the projective understanding of man, which is time-bound, would be possible only in virtue of an awareness of time, the consciousness of which could not itself be time-bound. This would not necessarily imply that in man even this non-temporal knowing would be eternal or absolutely timeless. I f at least a part of man's knowing is necessarily temporal, then even that knowing which would escape the temporal could be no more than a tern poral. This fact of the atemporality of at least some of man 's knowing, and the fact that man is a being whose being is transubjective to himself as a subj ect points to an answer for the question which must next occupy us, namely the relation between time and being. We have seen how things are temporal, and how even man's projective understanding does not escape the temporal. But if some of man 's knowing is atemporal, then an aspect of man's being may be said to be atemporal as well. And if this is true of man's being, it may also be true of being as such. But although it may be true to say that the being of man is relatively timeless or atemporal, as indicated by the peculiar char­ acter of his knowing, it may seem absurd to say that the being of things is relatively timeless or atemporal, when those things are so patently temporal. However, since there is a distinction between being and thing, it could occur that things might be temporal, and being, even the being of things, not necessarily so. It is, of course, true that the distinction between being and thing is a relation of separation. This means that although the thing is not being, and 81

being not the thing (separation) , the thing does depend upon being ; and being, in this sense, mu.st depend upon the thing (relation) . Being depends upon the thing to the extent that only so long as there are things is there being. Qn the other hand, the thing as an appearance of being is a particular and individual thing only if it is separate in itself and separated from other things. But being can be separated from other things, and be self-identical with itself, only if there are other things. This means that the thing is not only dependent upon being for its being ; it is also dependent upon the being of others. Hence the couplet proves true : there is being only if there are things ; there are things only if there is being. This avoids, it may be noted, the problem of the one and the many which so exercized the Greeks. After Parmenides being could only be one ; and beings or things, many. But as I have attempted to show, being can only be plural (the existential relation between phenomena and noumena) ; and the thing, singular (the essential and existential relation between phenomenon and noum­ enon) . Indeed, were it not for the fact that the 'existence' of being depends upon things, we would land right back in the old Greek problematic of the one and the many. Being is one only from the point of view of the essential. But this viewpoint implies that being either is or has an essence, which, as we have seen, cannot be true. Being is being no matter where it is found ; and from the point of view of the existential it is many, not one. This is, indeed, how it is experienced. Being is not and cannot be the sum total of all beings. In metaphysics, as Hegel rightly saw, the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts. 1 There is, over and above the beings that would make up 'being', the necessary element of relation. Being is the existential relation between phenomena and noumena. We may now return more specifically to the question of the relation between time and being. Our analysis of the ontological structure of the thing, whether living or non-living, revealed it as an essential relation between phenomenon and Houmenon. The living or the non-living thing must appear in order to continue in appear­ ance as an appearance of being self-identical with itself. In the case of the non-living thing the appearance of its being moves vertically from the noumenal and in the direction of the phenomenal. This is what throws tp.e non-living thing onto the horizontal plane of time. In the case of the living thing the movement between the phenomenal and the noumenal is in two directions. The phenom-

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enon of feedback in living organisms finds it basis here. And it is this that makes it possible for the living thing to vary, to a limited extent, the times of its appearances. It possesses a more complex sort of time which can be governed, to some extent, internally, rather than purely by external forces and situations. The necessary continuance in appearance for the non-living thing eventually means disappearance - the 'appearance' of the noumenal nothing of the thing. It is, similarly, in accordance with the 'awareness, however primitive, of this possible noumenal nothing of the total appearance of disappearance which forces the living thing to adapt internally to the external world ·of appearances. These appearances are clearly not unreal. There are, of course, appearances which appear to man which are unreal ; and these have their basis largely in the noumenal nothing in man. But the philosophical implications of hallucinations and illusions for human knowing cannot be fully elaborated here. Were the actual appear­ ances of things not those of the thing, then the self-adaptation of a living, appearing thing would not be possible. For the living thing to adapt to the appearances of things, those appearances must be the thing's. Otherwise the adaptation cannot prove successful. It is the first appearance of the thing in being and the nothing of its disappearance which constitutes the time-span of the individual thing. This nothingness at the end of the span of time across which the thing exists may not be understood as something isolated from the being of that which does or will cease to exist. This nothing is implied in the continued appearance of the thing, whether in the phenomenon of self-adaptation or in its continued appearance as something self-identical with itself. The completion of this time-span is the existential noumenon of the appearing thing, taken horizontally. The necessary fact of this completion does not mean that there is some internal 'death mechanism' within the thing, whether living or non-living. Things are essentially 'lazy.' No more of the non-living thing appears than is necessary to keep it in appearance. It tends to conserve itself and its energy; it is conservative also in the sense that it is resistant to change. The same is true of the living thing. There is no built-in inevitability toward death. The living thing is marvelously struc­ tured toward life and adaptation. And within that structure the self-adaptation necessary to continue in appearance as something self-identical with itself takes place. The possibilities of self-adaptation are limited, again not because of some internal defect in constitution, but because the

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living thing must live in a world of other bodies ; and the ways in which it can adapt itself to other things in appearance (or pre-adapt them to itself) are limited. Those ways are limited because the thing is an essential relation be.tween the phenomenal and the noumenal ; it is a certain kind of thing. This does not mean that in self-adaptive change the limitation to being a certain kind of thing itself actually changes. Change takes place within that limit. It is this that accounts for the characteristic time-spans of things of the same type. But neither may the being of the thing be said to change. For being to change, it would have to become something other than it is, that is, non-being. Such a mode of change would eventuate in the pure becoming of the phenomenally existential, which, as we have seen, is not a real pole. Pure becoming is the totally undifferentiated interchange between being and non-being. It does not itself appear. It is never phenomenal essentially, but only existentially. And even existentially it does not exist as a real pole. The coming-to-be of becoming 'exists' only if there is something that comes to be. And there is something that comes to be only if there is being. Hence, even for the becoming of the existentially phenomenal to 'exist' in any sense, being must be. But if neither the essential nor the existential relation between phenomenon and noumenon change, yet the thing does, then what is the ontological basis for change in the thing ? Change can take place only within the limit of the essential, though once the thing has been constituted, this limit cannot itself be changed without the thing's destruction as this particular thing. But even though the being of the particular thing does not itself change, because of its necessary relation in appearance to other beings (since such appearance necessarily requires the mediation of the existential) , the existential acts as the basis for change in the thing. I t may at first sight seem paradoxical to say that a being or thing changes and is temporal, whereas its being does not change and is not temporal. However, it is no more paradoxical than saying, as we were forced to say above, that the thing is sensible, whereas its being is not ; and yet its being must 'be' for the thing to be sensible. The thing's relation to being can last only so long as the thing can continue to appear among appearing things. Only so long as it can continue to relate to things can it continue in being. Failure to continue in appearance betokens disappearance. This disappearance is the existentially noumenal. It is, taken horizontally, the com­ plete and total appearance of the thing, its 'finish. ' But in ac-

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cordance with the way the thing appears, and must needs appear, its failure to continue in appearance could arise only from one source, namely from the existential noumenon of the thing, taken vertically. For it is at the point of the noumenal nothing of the thing that it finds its relation to being, and hence also the possi­ bility of its unrelating to being. In other words, the relation of separation between the thing and its being is exactly this noumenal nothing. It is ultimately this noumenal nothing, then, which is the ground of time, whether in the living or the non-living thing. Indeed, the living thing can vary, to some extent, the times of its appear­ ances ; nonetheless, it is the necessity of continued appearance which requires the movement from the noumenal to the phenomenal, in the non-living thing, and the two-directional movement between the noumenal and the phenomenal, in the case of the living thing, that produces time. This nothing is a gap or fault in the existence of the thing. This relation of separation between thing and being is, indeed, bridged, as the constant appearance of the non-living thing clearly testifies. It is also bridged in the living thing as well, as can be seen in the phenomenon of self-adaptation . But the noumenal nothing, nevertheless, remains a relation of separation , the weak link in the chain of being's appearance as a thing. Other philosophers have pointed to this 'negative quantity' or defective character in beings. For example, Roman Ingarden finds fragility and 'defect' in the 'fissured' character of inanimate being as much more radical than in animal individua. 2 However, although the possibilities of self-adaptive response are greater in living than in non-living things, we have already noted the disadvantages of the necessary added complexity attendant upon such added ver­ satility. Hence, it may be suggested that the relation of separation which the living thing has to being is far more tenuous than that of non-living things. The mode of appearance is also simpler, if only because in the non-living thing a single, rather than a double, directional movement is involved. And one might argue, by exten­ sion, that the further one goes up the chain of life the more tenuous becomes that relation to being. The thing is related to being by a nothing ; being is separated from the thing by a nothing. The thing does not and cannot exhaust the possibilities of being; otherwise being would appear totally, completely, and entirely, which would represent the total disappearance of every-thing. Being is, literally, no-thing. On the other hand, nothing is attached to the being of the thing. It 85

goes right along with its being, and is the basis for its time. There is a sense in which Sartre is. correct when he says that nothing 'haunts' (hante) being; it haunts the being of the thing. It belongs to it as the gap which is bridged through the continued appearance of the thing and in the fact of self-adaptation. And it must be bridged if the thing is to retain that self-identity necessary for continued appearance. It is iti this way that nothing constitutes the ground of time in the thing. But then, what of being ? Is being temporal as well ? If the thing is temporal, and if being depends upon the thing to the extent that if there were no things, there would be no appearance of being, and hence no appearance, then it would seem that being would have to be temporal. But how could being's time possibly be determined, since we have nothing with which to compare it ? And if being were temporal, and if it were itself the basis of the temporality of the thing, then would not being actually end up outside being ? Because of the dependence of being upon things, as long as there are things, there is being. But this necessary dependence upon appearing things also implies that as long as there were things, there was being; and similarly, as long as there will be things, there will be being. Being is temporal to this extent, namely, to the extent that it cannot be totally independent of appearing things ; otherwise they would not be. Hence, whatever else being may be, it cannot be conceived as an eternal present, or better, if being is seen as an eternal present, then it has merely been conceived in an abstract fashion. The past adheres to the present, just as the present and the past will adhere to the future ; and the future can, to some extent, change both the present and the past. And this coinherence of present, past, and future, would be possible only in virtue of the relative temporality of being. If being were not at least relatively temporal, in other words, if being were an eternal present, then its total detachment from temporal things would throw their very being into question. Indeed, the effect of the past upon the present, and of the present upon the future indicates that being is not itself temporal in the way that the thing is. The thing is temporal in the present as a here and a now, as has been seen. But being cannot be 'present' in this sense, and much less in the sense of an eternal present; that is, if temporal things are, in fact, related to being. Hence, since being is no more than relatively timeless, there is no need to spell it with a capital 'B' nor to equate it with God. God's 'time,' curiously like that of the thing, could only be a present.

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And this would be the basis for Spinoza's vis intuitiva, which re­ presents a knowledge of the particular thing in its unique indi­ viduality. Short of total disappearance this knowledge would be possible only for God. There is, of course, a difference between the here and now present of the individual thing and that of God. From the point of view of the individual thing, God's being could only be absolutely timeless. But though different, the fact of the similarity of these two 'presents' renders possible a knowledge of God. Being, however, is only relatively timeless. There may very well have been a 'time' when things were not, as there may very well be a time when things will cease to appear. And given the nature of appearance as it has thus far been unfolded, this is very likely the case. And if being depends upon things, as well as things upon being, then this must be true of being as well. One thing seems certain: if things represent an appearance of being, and if this appearance necessarily implies time, and further, if being depends upon things, then 'prior' to being it is impossible to speak of time. Being is relatively temporal and also relatively timeless. It is relatively temporal because of the noumenal nothing, the relation of separation between thing and being. But being is also relatively timeless in that it is separated from the temporality of things by the noumenal nothing. It is relatively temporal because of its necessary dependence upon things. The thing is an appearance of being; and appearance necessarily implies time, which, denoting possible disappearance, leaves being at least relatively temporal. It is, then, because of this relation between things and being that is relatively temporal. It is because of the separation between being and things that it is relatively timeless. And the locale of this relation of separation is the noumenal nothing, the ground of time at the base of the thing, the point at which being and thing are related. The relation of separation between being and thing indicates that being is both relatively temporal and relatively timeless. 3.

NOTHING AND NON-BEING

If being has been forgotten because of the ontological difference of nothing between being and thing has been ignored, then one may push Heidegger's thought one step further, and suggest that nothing has been forgotten as much as has being. But though it is a rela­ tively simple matter to pose the 'being question,' one might well wonder how to go about posing the 'nothing question ? '

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It may be recalled that Heidegger, in fact, used the 'nothing question' in his inaugural lecture What is Metaphysics ? as a ploy to lead his auditors back into the question of being. But it was also noted above that when we attempt to ask the being question in the form 'What is being ?', as though being were a thing or a concept, we get the answer 'nothing. ' Being is literally no-thing. And taken conceptually it is totally empty and indeterminate, again nothing. We might, then, ask 'the 'nothing question' by asking the wrong question about being. And if this were the case, we might be tempted to ask the being question by asking the wrong question about nothing. But in accordance with the basic intentionality of question and answer, this would more likely than not involve us in a hopelessly vicious circle of deception and error. What makes it possible for us to ask the wrong question about being is, indeed, the nothing which is the relation of separation between being and thing. This nothing is not an absolute, but only a relative nothing. It separates the being and the thing. But it also relaties the thing to being, such that 'the thing's continuing in appearance should be both possible and necessary. Hence, this nothing is also, as has been seen, the ground of time. It is this nothing as the relation of separation between being and the thing, and the dependence of being upon the thing, which renders being relatively temporal. It is also this noumenal nothing of the thing, to which being is necessarily related for its appearance, which indicates that being can be no more than relatively timeless. The thing is that which appears ; being appears only as a thing. The noumenal nothing of the thing cannot appear ; it appears only in the thing's disappearance. The thing can appear totally, completely, and entirely only in its disappearance. And if being appears as thing, then the total disappearance of things would imply the total disappearance of being. Being can be no more than relatively timeless, that is, if things appear.' But for being to appear as thing, then being must lie beyond the noumenal nothing of the thing. Being has a phenomenal aspect, for it comes to appear as some-thing. The appearance of being as a thing is being become something. This become something represents both the introduction of new things and the continuing appearance of existing things. It indicates that being possesses a certain dynamism and vitality. The view of being as static and lifeless does not accord with the fact of new appearance and continuance in appearance. This does not mean that this dynamism of being has the same

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source, or that it is of the same sort as that within the living or non­ living thing. The movement between the phenomenal and the noumenal in the living and non-living thing involves (that is, pro­ duces or requires) physical energy ; the dynamism of being could not require or produce an energy of the same sort, even though it might be the ultimate source of such energy. For what else could sustain the continuing manifestation of the thing over a period of 'presents,' except something whose dynamism represented a certain relative timelessness through past, present, and future ? Nevertheless, this dynamism, like the energy involved in the movement between the noumena:1 and the phenomenal in the thing is also relational and directional. There does not seem to be any indication of 'feedback' in the case of being. This would obtain only if there were a total recurrence of things. And such an eternal recur­ rence would render dubious the horizontal character of time and the uniqueness of the individual thing in its self-identical relationship with itself, and with this the character of its necessary appearance. Being, like the thing, moves in the direction of the phenomenal, toward the becoming which will come to be something, that is, toward the thing as an appearance of being. In other words, there must be a similar structure with being as with the thing - that is, if being is at least relatively temporal - in accordance with its dependence upon the thing. The appearance of being as an ap­ pearing thing could proceed only from the noumenal to the phenom­ enal. But if being, taken phenomenally, is becoming, which involves a synthesis of both being and non-being, there must be an existen­ tially noumenal to being as well, namely non being, corresponding to the existential noumenon of the thing. Non-being, as the noumenally existential of being, should not thereby be identified with the nothing which is the noumenally existential of the thing. For although the noumenally existential of the thing accounts for the relative temporality of being, and indicates the possibility of its relative timelessness, this existential noumenon could not wholly account for the relative timelessness of being. This means that beyond the being appearing as thing there is non-being, otherwise the nothing which is the relation of separat1 on between thing and being would not go along with the thing. Simi­ larly, there would be no movement in the direction of appearance, with the possible total disappearance of being in accordance with the possible complete and entire appearance of things. But if the existentially noumenal of the thing is nothing, and that of being, non-being ; and if there is a distinction between being

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and thing, then there is also a distinction between nothing and non­ being. Nothing is the ground. of time for the thing, and it is the dependence of being upon things, grounded in the noumcnal nothing of the thing which makes being Eelatively temporal. But being is also relatively timeless ; and here we may see the reason why. Being is only relatively timeless because even its appearance as temporal things necessarily involves becoming, which, as the phenom­ enally existential of being implies the synthesis of being and non­ being. And non-being is not and cannot be the ground for the temporal, since it absolutely is not. But if nothing is the ground of the relative temporality of the thing, then non-being would seem to be the ' ground' for its relative timelessnes. And this would mean that not only is there a distinction between nothing and non-being, but also that the basis for this distinction is time. Time is the dif­ ference between nothing and non-being. In general, philosophers have failed to make this distinction between nothing and non-being. And the failure should probably be laid at the doorsteps of Parmenides. This most important pre­ Socratic thinker simply said 'what is not is not . ' Nothing and non-being were both indiscriminately cast into the outer darkness before philosophers really had an opportunity to see what had been rej ected. But Parmenides also failed to make another important distinction, namely between being and thing. In fact, perhaps he failed to make this latter distinction exactly because he failed to make the distinction between non-being and nothing. This would seem to be verified by the fact that Parmenides also denied time, which is the distinction between nothing and non-being. In other words, when non-being and nothing were both cast into a common oblivion, not only was the distinction between being and thing rendered difficult, but any proper metaphysical understanding of time was almost out of the question. Hegel broached the possibility of such ' a distinction between nothing and non-being, but was unable to hold onto it. For a few moments in his 'Longer Logic' he toyed with the distinction between nothing (Nichts) and non-being (Nichtsein) , but he was unable to carry through with this insight because he lacked a basis for this distinction. In the Logic being and non-being or nothing are under­ stood in purely conceptual terms ; hence the becoming in which they are synthesized and separated is equally conceptual. Hegel's ' becoming' exists at the level of abstract discourse ; it has nothing to do with the time produced by the possibility and necessity of appearance and self-adaptation.

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Indeed, if there were no time, then there would be no distinction between nothing and non-being. And if there is no nothing as the relation of separation between thing and being, then Parmenides' failure to distinguish between being and thing is thoroughly intel­ ligible. Similarly, if for Hegel there is no distinction between nothing and non-being, then it is no wonder that his becoming operates at the level of the conceptual and the eternal. For if the difference between nothing and non-being is time, then their identi1 y could be nothing else but eternity. There is something of a for�shadowing of this eternity in the total appearance of the thing in disappearance. And as things, which represent the appearance of being, are made to appear more and more completely, more and more quickly, time is speeded up, being itself is forced to appear more and more totally. The resources of being are not unlimited, as the dependence of being upon things, along with their necessary appearance, readily indicates. There is an eschatology to being which, when there is literally no­ thing more appearing, can only cause the collapse of the time differential between non-being and nothing into the identity of eternity. This appearance of being is not necessitated by non-being in the same way that the appearance of the thing is n�cessi tated by the noumenal nothing of the thing. The noumenal nothing acts as the ground for the temporality of the thing and for the relative tempo­ rality of being. But as \Ve shall see, the noumenal non-being does not and cannot act as the total ground for the relative timelessness of being. If it could, then being would not move from the noumenal to the phenomenal and in the direction of its appearance as thing. Being and non-being would simply become mutually interchange­ able in a pure becoming, which as the phenomenally existential pole of being would be abstract and eternal rather than the coming-to-be of something real. Again, the question of the 'existence' of the poles of phenomena and noumena to being must be recalled. As we saw in the case of the thing, not only are the 'poles' not known existentially (that is, experienced), they are not even real for that existential aspect of the thing for which they are the poles. Similarly in the case of being. The pure becoming of the phenomenally existential or the absolute non-existence of the noumenally existential simply do not exist. Being is the existential relation between noumena and phenom­ ena, moving in the direction of the appearance of things. These poles cannot be existent if being appears as things, which as 91

determinate, appearing beings do not represent pure becoming, and much less non-being. Beyond the appearance of the thing is nothing ; beyond the appearance of disappearance is being ; beyond being is non-being ; and beyond non-being . . .

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CHAPTER V

GOD

I . THE PROBLEM OF GOD

The problem of God is not a new one in philosophy. It has been around at least as long as philosophy. And whether one takes the view that philosophy arose out of the religion of ancient Greece, or the view espoused in this work that philosophy arises as a necessary mediating synthesis between religion and science, the problem of God is not likely to disappear, even though in recent times one often hears of the disappearance or even of the 'death of God.' But although the problem of God is not a new one, the partic­ ular form it takes in our age, for example, ofteri is. Thus by the 'death of God' one may understand simply the failure of Christians to lead authentically Christian lives, indicating that so far as Christianity is concerned God does not seem to exist. Or it can mean the radical theology in which God has made man, made him heir to the earth, disappeared from the scene, and left it all to man. Or for those of a more scientific bent the death of God is simply the end of a hypothesis no longer needed to account for the origin and development of things in the light of the advances of scientific knowledge and theory. Indeed, the problem of God was . by no means solved, but rather aggravated by those modern philosophers who used God in one or another metaphysical or epistemological function. The performance of such menial metaphysical tasks as guaranteeing the possibility of an external world (Descartes) , ultimately making phenomena possible ( Kant) , or enabling an understanding of the uniquely individual (Spinoza), etc. , simply raised more problems than it actually solved. Indeed, the existence of God does not solve any philosophical puzzles; it merely raises more difficult ones. But whereas the problem of God in classical modern philosophy

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consisted largely in placing him in some particular niche in the metaphysical system to perfo�m an assigned metaphysical function, the problem of God in contemporary philosophy is one of finding a place for God at all. One can �ee this most clearly, for example, in the philosophy of Sartre. There is simply nothing that God could be. For Sartre being is either an 'in itself' (a thing) or a 'for itself (a being able to make 5omething of himself) . But if God is conceived of as immutable, then he is entirely self-sufficient unto himself, and thus as an 'in itself' has no need to become his own self. He cannot, then , be a person. But neither can he be a thing; for the 'in itself' is already totally full and complete. In Sartre's philosophy there is simply no place for God. Besides, if there would be a God, then man, as a being able to create his own self (a 'for itself') , would be created by God, and hence man would not create himself. 1 In many ways the existentialist denial of a place for God is already contained in the denial of essence in any traditional sense. It is true, of course, that Heidegger uses the German word Wesen, but the word does not mean 'essence,' as has been seen. Similarly, Sartre uses the French word essence, as in the phrase 'Existence comes before essence,' but the word means something closer to character or personality in the way he uses it. 2 For if one were to assert that God has an essence, whether it would be knowable or not, then it would have to be infinite, and if man's being were swallowed up in this infinity, then man would not be the creator of himself. 3 But even more fundamental for the contemporary problem of God, and perhaps the reason behind all those mentioned above, is the rise and dominance of the theory of evolution. In mediaeval philosophy, for example, God was looked upon as pure act, as unchangeable; and this was seen as a perfection. But after Darwin and the almost universal influence of the theory of evolution, from sociology to theology, from physics to philosophy, pure act or unchangeable being no longer came to be considered a perfection. For if to live was to change, then if God did not change, he could not be alive. God was not a living God, but a dead one. This is an abvious oversimplification, but like many over­ simplifications it contains its kernel of truth. And it must be remembered that the majority of unthinking men, and even thin­ king men in their mor