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Is Metaphysics Possible? Author(s) : Stanley Rosen Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Dec., 1991), Pp. 235-257 Published By: Stable URL: Accessed: 22/09/2013 21:38
Is Metaphysics Possible? Author(s) : Stanley Rosen Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Dec., 1991), Pp. 235-257 Published By: Stable URL: Accessed: 22/09/2013 21:38
Is Metaphysics Possible? Author(s) : Stanley Rosen Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Dec., 1991), Pp. 235-257 Published By: Stable URL: Accessed: 22/09/2013 21:38
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ISMETAPHYSICS POSSIBLE?*
STANLEY ROSEN
.LruRiNG the past two decades, much has been said about the
ostensible exhaustion of the age of metaphysics.1 This thesis is
closely related to the claim that history, or western European his
tory, is over, or else that we have shifted from the historical
epoch
of modernism to that of postmodernism. bringWe can
out the
*
Presidential Address to the Metaphysical Society of America, Penn
sylvania State University, March 8, 1991.
11 was materially assisted in the improvement of this paper by long
discussions of earlier versions with four students: Alfredo Ferrarin, Ales
sandra Fussi, Sylvia Benso, and Luciano Cordo.
cating that they indict Plato's historical influence rather than the
actual content of his thought, which is concealed within the enig
matic dialogues. By Platonism is meant a rather Aristotelian un
2
Martin Heidegger, Beitr?ge zur Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann, 1989), 5, 20.
temporally produced.
Although the terms are not those of Heidegger, I suggest that
we may understand his distinction between origination-process and
its self-concealed manifestations or reifications as a version of the
distinction between transcendental and immanent temporality,
which is also to be found in Hegel's distinction between Absolute
activity and human history. For my present purposes the most
3
Phaedrus 245a5.
4
De Anima 411a27.
5
De Anima 405b31, 407a32, 434al6.
tainly exposes the soul to change in its perceptual, and hence cog
nitive, activity.
The comparison between
Hegel and Heidegger can also profit
6
Phaedrus 248al.
7
De Anima 429al, 431al6.
8
De Anima 431b21.
interaction, the
within rhythm of thinking.
Heidegger's distinction between Being and beings may be un
derstood as a post-Hegelian revision of an Aristotelian insight. Al
Heidegger calls
Being, we can see in the latter a residue of the Ar
istotelian formulation of the relation between being and thinking.
As we have just noted, for Aristotle the eidos or species form, or
II
10
See "Much Ado About Nothing" in my The Quarrel Between Phi
losophy and Poetry (New York: Routledge, 1988).
11
See "Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato," in The Quarrel Between
Philosophy and Poetry, 127-47.
being, and
certainly none of Being or the Whole. Aristotle, on the
other hand, clearly refers to the science of being qua being in con
12 see my
For detailed discussion of this, book, Plato's Sophist (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
possible? that takes its bearings from the actual uses of the term
will soon dissolve into an endless series of particular historical and
doctrinal analyses. The multiplicity of the conceptions of meta
physics is itself no doubt due to the fact that what we mean by this
term is a consequence of what we mean by philosophy. It is tempt
Ill
legomenon, that is, a term applied with respect to the sense of ousia,
but not in such a way (kath1 hen) as to define a single science. The
13
Phaedo 100a3; Philebus 16dl.
14
Metaphysics 1003a33.
intellectually the eidos in its unity and identity. The first alternative
is of course excluded for Aristotle, since to know an eidos is to possess
its definition, and there is no predication in a definition.15 There is
a deeper difficulty in this alternative, however. If it is asserted, we
must distinguish between essential and accidental properties of the
substance; obviously no essence can have accidental properties. But
in order to specify the essential properties, we must know the
essence.
15
Posterior Analytics 90b33.
verify the distinction between essences and accidents, or, what comes
to the same thing, between substances and essences. This verifi
cation rests upon intellectual intuition; that is, it is prediscursive
or meta-scientific. As has often been noted, the Aristotelian science
of being qua being rests upon the givenness, within pretheoretical
experience, of separate and composite particulars such as man, dog,
horse, but also tree, stone, star, and so on. To this we can add the
16
Metaphysics 1034a6,1038a33.
17
Posterior Analytics 100b7. Cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1040b31.
18
Nichomachean Ethics 1040b31.
19
Metaphysics 981b27-29, 982b7-9.
20
See note 9 above.
21
Posterior Analytics 73b26.
22
In particular, in bk. 7, ch. 13; see the commentary by Frede and
Patzig to this passage in their Aristoteles, Metaphysik Z, Text, ?bersetzung,
und Kommentar, 1 (Munich: C. H. Beck Verlag, 1988), Bd. 2, p. 241.
23
Posterior Analytics 90b33.
24
Metaphysics 1034a6, 1038a33.
IV
together with its extension into the modern period in the guise of
Cartesianism, and of neo-Kantian positivism and phenomenology,
and if, on the other hand, we say "process" metaphysics is exem
knowledge of pure form, has reopened the way for a more diverse
understanding of what it is to know, and hence of what it is to be a
form, that is, the structure of what appears.
In the remaining section of this paper, I put historical specu
lations to one side and I attempt to make my point in purely analytic
or theoretical terms. Stated with introductory brevity, this point
is that metaphysics is rooted in a silence that corresponds directly
to the discontinuity between our noetic reach and our dianoetic or
discursive grasp. I limit myself in this paper to illustrating this
discontinuity by some remarks about unity and identity.
We saw from our consideration of Aristotle that there are very
strong reasons to distinguish between the intuitive or prediscursive
foundations and the discursive development of metaphysics, under
stood as an epist?m? of being qua being. Despite Aristotle's con
tention that the sense of being qua being is given by the schema of
the categories, it is rather the case that the primary sense of being
qua being is ousia in the sense of to ti en einai or eidos. Putting
Aristotle to one side at this point in our reflections, let us consider
the nature of the difficulty presented a
by metaphysics of pure form.
Each form is both a unity and an identity. It is an identity in
the sense that we can
distinguish it from all other forms, and this
requires that it possess an internally articulated structure of sub
eidetic elements. It is also a unity, however, in the sense that all
subeidetic elements cohere in the given identity as "this identity
here, and none other." The point may seem obscure, but it can be
made indirectly as follows. The identity of each form is different
from all the others; but the unity of every form, qua unity, is the
same. The unity underlies the identity; it is visible in the coherence
of features as this one identity. Put another way, each identity is
both one and many; it is many as a plurality of subeidetic elements,
but one as a single identity.
If we ask the question What is it? concerning something, the
correct answer is to give its identity. But that which allows the
identity to present itself as this identity rather than as a transient
multiplicity of formal traits is its unity. This is the unity that Kant
attempts to impose onto "psychological" associations via the syn
thetic activity of the transcendental ego. His description of the
transcendental ego, however, as well as of its functions, is the stip
ulation of identities.
The transcendental ego is constituted as the transcendental
unity of apperception, which has a determinate identity that is given
by the specification of the powers of reason and the understanding,
hence as the regulative Ideas, the table of categories, and so on.
This identity might be otherwise, given some other account of the
conditions for the possibility of discursive thinking in beings like
ourselves. But the properties or faculties constituting the alter
native identity would be unified within some equivalent to the tran
scendental unity of apperception.
One cannot arrive at an ultimate unity by a series of syntheses,
but only at an
identity; and this identity could have been otherwise.
The unity that
is "projected" by the transcendental ego, however
that set of conditions is identified, is not a sum of functions?not,
in other words, a multiplicity?but the condition for the unity of
each and every identity. The identity of the transcendental ego is
(which may also be written out more fully in the language of the
predicate calculus).
The distinction between the unity and identity of form is pivotal
for understanding the absurdity of the attempt to derive an alter
native to metaphysics by distinguishing between Being and beings.
A distinction between
Being beings can be drawn
and in only two
ways. Either we refer to that which is common to every being (on,
res, Seiendes), or we refer to some origination-process of beings.
In the latter case, however, we arrive at what is unspeakable in any
beings, each with its own unity and identity. The many senses of
being make it finally impossible to answer the question What is the
sense of being? Despite the primacy of eidos, there is no one sense
of being underlying the diversity of senses in Aristotle's analyses
"belonging." But
belonging is not itself a phenomenological prop
erty; we may perceive one attribute as associated with another, but
we cannot analyze the appearance except by imposing logical defi
nitions, that is, linguistic stipulations, onto how things look to us.
To say "p belongs to S" is a statement of a logical form that we
stipulate as regulating associations of a certain kind. These stip
ulations, however, do not, as it were, superimpose the property of
omnipresence of unity.
These changes are no longer to be explained as changes in the
metaphysics.
I am under no illusion that the preceding paragraphs will suffice
to persuade my readers of the claim, to which I subscribe, that unity
is a sign of Being. My hope is that they will serve to indicate how
metaphysics is possible even though not actual. It may be easier
to accept the refutation of the claim that metaphysics is a science
of being qua being in the sense of the derivation of a schema of
namely, the
attempt to elicit the senses of Being in myths, poetic
dramas, and even in simple accounts of how philosophy emerges
from everyday life.
From this standpoint, metaphysics does not depend upon silence;
but neither does it depend upon the elaboration of a spurious "new"