On Pluhar's Solution to Certain Problems of Uniting the Three Kantian Critiques: Part I & II

I

Werner Pluhar "Translator's Introduction" to Kant's Critique of Judgment is not simply a brief summary of the main results of Kant's final critique, but it is rather an attempt to make plausible the unity of Kant's critical philosophy, a unity for which the power of judgment plays a central role. Pluhar writes: 

. . . it is the power of judgment that mediates the transition from the completely indeterminate supersensible as substrate of nature to the morally determined supersensible, and hence from the realm of nature of the first Critique to the realm of freedom of the second Critique . . .The power of judgment, especially the aesthetic power of judgment . . .  performs the mediation by means of its indeterminate concept of nature's subjective purposiveness, as equivalent to the indeterminate concept of the supersensible basis of this purposiveness . . . It thereby unites the three Critiques in a system (Pluhar, lxxxv). 

What is going on here?  Far from understanding the Critique of Judgment as a work of aesthetics in Kant's declining declining years, Pluhar sees the work as Kant did, a work that is supposed to somehow bridge the fissure between the first two Critiques.  Kant is quite clear in both of his Introductions to the Critique of Judgment about the task given to the Critique of Judgment.  In Section III of the Second Introduction to the Critique of Judgment -- the one published during Kant's lifetime -- the philosopher writes: 

The concepts of nature, which contain a priori the basis for all theoretical cognition, were found to rest on the legislation of the understanding.  The concept of freedom was found to contain a priori the basis for all practical precepts that are unconditioned by the sensible, and to rest on the legislation of reason (Kant, Critique of Judgment, Pluhar edition, 16). 

But how might these two connect?  Kant in the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason discussed the tension between physical human beings who fall under the mechanistic determinism of the First Critique and these same beings simultaneously acting out of duty for the sake of the moral law falling under freedom in the Second Critique.  How is this possible? Kant explains: 

Therefore, both these powers, apart from being applicable in terms of logical form to principles of whatever origin, have in addition a legislation of their own in terms of content which is not subject to any other (a priori) legislation, and hence this justifies the division of philosophy into theoretical and practical (CJ, 16).

Kant is claiming that while the Understanding legislates over the realm of nature and Reason (practically considered) over the realm of morality, and while the two must remain in their own spheres, there is nonetheless a way to connect these legislations, a way not subject to the a priori legislations of either, a way that grants some unity to philosophy in both its theoretical and practical uses.  What is this way? 

Kant argues that there is a mediating link between understanding and reason, and this link is judgment.  He writes: 

And yet the family of our higher cognitive powers also includes a mediating link between understanding and reason. This is judgment, about which we have cause to suppose, by analogy, that it too may contain a priori, if not a legislation of its own, then at least a principle of its own, perhaps a merely subjective one, by which to search for laws. Even though such a principle would lack a realm of objects as its own domain, it might sill have some territory, and this territory might be of such a character that none but this very principle might hold in it (CJ, 16).  

Judgment does not legislate a priori as do the understanding through pure concepts and practical reason through the determination of the will by the moral law, but it nonetheless does something.  It is, in fact, an a priori subjective principle that has a territory, though not a domain. It is concerned with coherence and systematicity, with the unity of our a priori legislative endeavors.  Kant declares that judgment used in such a mediation of understanding and reason pertains to an "ordering of our presentational powers, an ordering that seems even more important than the one involving judgment's kinship with the family of cognitive powers" (Ibid.).  Given that Kant spends considerable time in the Critique of Pure Reason reflecting upon, clarifying and developing the notion of judgment employed there, the assertion that the notion of judgment developed in this Third Critique is "even more important" is almost shocking.  Kant explains how judgment so conceived relates to understanding and reason. 

For all of the souls' powers or capacities can be reduced to three that can't be derived further from a common basis: the cognitive power, the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and the power of desire. The understanding alone legislates for the cognitive power when this power is referred to nature, namely, as a power of theoretical cognition . . . for only with respect to nature (as appearance) is it possible for us to give laws by means of a priori concepts of nature, which are actually pure concepts of the understanding.  For the power of desire, considered as a higher power governed by the concept of freedom, only reason (which alone contains that concept) legislates a priori.  Now between the cognitive power and the power of desire lies the feeling of pleasure, just as judgment lies between understanding and reason. Hence we must suppose . . .  that judgment contains an a priori principle of its own, and also suppose that since the power of desire is necessarily connected with pleasure or displeasure, . . . judgment will bring about a transition from the pure cognitive power, i.e., from the domain of the concepts of nature, to the domain of the concept of freedom, just as in its logical use it makes possible the transition from understanding to reason (CJ, 16-8).  

The problem is that the legislations of the understanding on nature and reason on the will are fundamentally heterogeneous. One might recall the problem of Descartes. How is the freedom of an immortal soul possible in a fully deterministic, mechanistic universe?  Descartes' dualistic causal interactionism was not able to bridge the disparate notice domains of res extensa and res cogitans.  

Kant has the same problem, it appears, but in a decidedly Kantian way. Instead of two ontically disparate domains, Kant gives us two different legislations, two different givings of laws: one to that which gives rise to the determination of nature, the other to that which gives rise to the determination of the will. But the determinations of nature and the determinations of the will are quite different: the former is a mechanistic, deterministic-type determination, the latter a free, practical reason-type determination.  Both are autonomous human activities; the former theoretical and the latter practical.  As a result of our legislation there are two domains, but these domains follow the legislation, they are not prior to it.  Kant says all of this quite clearly in Section 9:  

The understanding legislates a priori for nature, as object of sense, in order to give rise to theoretical cognition of nature in a possible experience.  Reason legislates a priori for freedom and for freedom's own causality, on other words, for the supersensible in the subject, in order to give rise to unconditioned practical cognition (CJ, 35)

But these legislations for the sake of nature and freedom do not integrally connect to each other. There is a disconnect.  Kant explains: 

The great gulf that separates the supersensible from appearances completely cuts off the domain of the concept of nature under the one legislation, and the domain of the concept of freedom under the other legislation, from any influence that each (according to is own basic laws) might have had on the other.  The concept of freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature, just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical laws of freedom; and to this extent it is not possible to throw a bridge from one domain to the other (CJ, 35-6).  

There is nothing in nature that can support freedom in the moral order. The sensible cannot, for Kant, determine the supersensible, but it is possible that the latter can determine the former. Freedom really can manifest itself in nature! 

. . . though the bases that determine the causality governed by the concept of freedom . . . do not lie in nature, and even though the sensible cannot determine the supersensible in the subject, yet the reverse is possible . . . and this possibility is contained in the very concept of a causality through freedom, whose effect is to be brought about in the world (but in conformity with the laws of freedom). It is true that when we use the word cause with regard to the supersensible, we mean only the basis that determines natural things to exercise their causality to produce an effect in conformity with natural laws proper to that causality, yet in accordance with the formal principle of the laws of reason as well (CJ, 36). 

Kant did, of course, use the term affection to talk about the relationship between the things-in-themselves and empirical objects.  There is something in the supersensible that constrains how empirical objects are constituted.  While human beings legislate nature, they do not fully construct it because nature (and its empirical objects) is a joint product between human cognizing activity and the thing-in-itself.  But in the passage above he uses the term cause, a term that in the First Critique is explicitly tied to application of the pure concepts of the understanding to spatialized-temporalized intuitions.  In fact, he uses cause in the way that the older metaphysicians did.  The cause of any determination is the logical ground of that determination.  The supersensible "grounds" causality in accordance with natural laws, while also "grounding" reason's freedom in its encounter with the moral law.  Kant is searching for unity.  But by what right does one say there is such unity? What is the grounding of this grounding?  \ Is the supersensible grounding a deliverance of metaphysical reason or a result of the understanding's application of its pure concepts? If neither, what is it? Kant elaborates:

It is judgment that presupposes this condition a priori, and without regard to the practical, [so that] this power provides us with the concept that mediates between the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom: the concept of a purposiveness of nature, which makes possible the transition from pure practical lawfulness, from lawfulness in terms of nature to the final purpose set by the concept of freedom.  For it is through this concept that we cognize the possibility of [achieving] the final purpose, which can be actualized only in nature and in accordance with its laws (CJ, 36-7).  

Judgment unifies the legislations of understanding and reason. It grants a determinability to the supersensible substrate, and thus mediates between it's undetermined nature from the standpoint of the understanding, and its determined nature from that of reason. 

The understanding . . . points to the supersensible substrate of nature; but it leaves this substrate wholly undetermined.  Judgment, through its a priori principle of judging nature in terms of possible particular laws of nature, provides nature's supersensible substrate (within as well as outside us) with determinability by the intellectual power.  But reason, through its practical law, gives this substrate determination.  This judgment makes possible the transition from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom (CJ, 37).  

Judgment grants the supersensible substrate of nature -- both outside and inside us! -- determinability, i.e. the possibility of determination.  Kant continues to explain how it is that judgment mediates between understanding and reason by appealing to the differing powers of each. 

Regarding the powers of the soul . . . , for the power of cognition . . .  the constitutive a priori principles lie in the understanding; for the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, they lie in judgment, [as far as it is] independent of concepts and sensations, which might have to do with determining the power of desire and hence be directly practical; for the power of desire, they lie in reason, which is practical without the mediation of any pleasure whatsoever, regardless of origin, and which determines of r this power . . . the final purpose that also carries with it pure intellectual liking for its object.  Judgment's concept of a purposiveness of nature still belongs to the concepts of nature, but only as a regulative principle of the cognitive power, even though the aesthetic judgment about certain objects (of nature or of art) that prompts this concept of purposiveness is a constitutive principle with regard to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure (CJ, 37).   

But what is this pleasure and displeasure of which Kant speaks?  It is of a distinctly intellectual kind. 

The spontaneity in the play of the cognitive powers, whose harmony with each other contains the basis of this pleasure, makes the concept of purposiveness suitable for mediating the connection of the domain of the concept of nature with that of the concept of freedom, as regards freedom's consequences, inasmuch as this harmony also promotes the mind's receptivity to moral feeling (CJ, 37-8).  

Kant argues that the transcendental condition for the possibility of the universality of judgment of taste is found in the way that beautiful objects incite in us a "free play" in the understanding and imagination, a harmony or "proportioned attunement" with respect to which the object is judged prior to the production of pleasure in us. The idea is that the general cognitive features of human beings include a reciprocal harmony between imagination and understanding. While judgments of taste make use of no determinate concepts, they nevertheless have a conceptual nature, and are accordingly reflective.  

Thus it is, for Kant, that the reciprocal harmony between understanding and imagination that is a feature of subjectivity within cognition in general also pertains to judgments of taste.  A judging of the object prior to the experience of pleasure occurs, and this judging consists in the recognition of the object engendering a harmony of imagination and understanding.  Upon this basis a judgment of taste can follow the subject's feeling of pleasure, a judgment which declares the judgment of taste universally valid.

In order to get maximum clarity on Kant's attempt to mediate understanding and reason by judgment, it is necessary to get very clear on what kind of judgment Kant is considering.  To this we now turn. 

II

For Kant, die Urteilskraft is the power "for thinking the particular under the universal." He distinguishes two kinds of judgments in the Critique of Judgment: determining judgments (die bestimmende Urteile) and reflecting judgments (die reflecterende Urteile).  

Determining judgments subsume given particulars under general concepts or universals already given. Kant makes extended use of determining judgments in the First Critique in synthesizing the manifold of intuition and in the act of imagination in "schematizing" its concepts. Judgment in both cases is governed by the categories of the understanding.

Reflecting judgments, on the other hand, are those which locate or find a universal for a given particular.  Kant assigns such reflecting judgments different roles in his system. The fact that there exist such reflecting judgments seems a primary motivation for Kant writing the Critique of Judgment.  

Kant believes reflecting judgments can be associated with empirical science, for such science presupposes one has the requisite ability to classify natural things into genera and species, and this ability demands reflecting judgment.  Moreover, the construction of systematic explanatory theories demands reflecting judgment.  Such judgments allow us to form empirical concepts and thus regard nature as empirically lawlike. 

But there are other important uses for reflectierende Urteile: They are used both in aesthetic and teleological judgments.  Kant believes reflecting judgments are most purely grasped in judgments about the beauty of nature. It is because of reflecting judgments that we can have a feeling of intellectual pleasure when encountering a beautiful object. Kant makes explicit appeal to the notion of reflecting judgment in his Deduction of Taste, where the principle of taste is identified with the "subjective principle of judgment in general."

Kant scholarship often treats the notion of judgment almost entirely as it appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, where it is involved with the pure concepts of the understanding and is accordingly cognitive in nature. More recent scholarship, however, has attempted to understand the notion of judgment employed in the earlier Critique on the basis of the notion of a reflecting judgment in the Critique of Judgment.  One might argue that reflecting judgments finally ground comparison and abstraction, both of which are necessary for the formation of empirical concepts.  It is these concepts, not treated in detail in the Critique of Pure Reason, that are nonetheless necessary for the application of the pure concepts of the understanding to intuition. 

So how is empirical knowledge truly possible for Kant?  Does he claim that empirical reality can be known solely on the basis of application of the pure concepts of the understanding to the realm of appearances?  It is this question that Kant is concerned with in the Critique of Judgment.  The particularity of empirical law demands not only constitutive legislation, but also empirical generalization.  Given that the cases are particular, Kant is interested in the universal that applies to them. What might we freely think that could account for the subsumption of individual cases under the universal?

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant deals with judgments of taste, judgments of teleology, and scientific induction generally.  Anybody studying the history and/or philosophy of science realize that human beings have, in fact, made sense of the world in different ways. Though nature's particulars are given contingently, human beings are free to think a universal that might account for the particulars, a universal that endeavors to understand these particulars in terms of a greater lawlike structure, i.e., a theory. 

The universal of which Kant is herein interested is not, however, that of the a priori which is necessary for the possibility of cognition as such. This universal is not legislated into nature, nor can it be deductively derived from nature's particulars. Kant is rather interested in the multiplicity of empirical forms. But how does this multiplicity of forms get unified? How can a random collection of phenomena not be a "rhapsody," but rather be seen in terms of the unity of nature? Simply put, how is coherent and unitary experience possible in nature's empirical, contingent manifestations? 

Since the faculty of judgment is  "thinking the particular as contained in the universal," the universal must apply to the particular, and the particular must instance the universal. Judgment connects particular cases to laws that apply to those cases; it connects universal laws with particular cases instantiating those laws.

In a reflecting judgment only the particular is given, and judgment must "find" the universal for the particular instance. Since this task must occur before any further operation of judgment, it is judgment's primary task. Unlike a determining judgment, there is no determination of objects in this judgment; it is merely reflective.  While in the Critique of Pure Reason, judgment "gives law" to the particular, in a reflective judgment, judgment searches for laws which can cover the particular.  Kant points out that since reflecting judgments do not legislate over an objective order, they actually apply properly only to themselves.  They are heuristic, not constitutive.  Such judgments nonetheless find the correct universal required by the specific empirical case.  One might say they are concerned with proper inductions.  

Reflecting judgments are heuristic. While they deal with subsumption, there is no general rule determining that judgment subsumes correctly.  Accordingly, reflecting judgment seems to have a precarious existence. Is the faculty of reflecting judgment simply a natural talent that some have, or can a priori principles be specified?  Kant's task in the Critique of Judgment is to isolate the a priori principles whereby proper subsumption occur.  Reflecting judgments naturally connect to judgments of taste because in these there is a universal rule that cannot be stated, but which is nonetheless connectable with the sensus communis of taste itself.

A primary aim of natural science is to offer a causal account of why things happen as they do.  In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is concerned with the objective validity of the universal order which governs the physical world; he is dealing with nature in general. But the world of nature in its empirical specificity is not finally determinable by application of the pure concepts of understanding alone. Something more is needed, something that can mediate between the universal, empirical laws of nature and particular instances of them. He believes that the faculty of judgment provides this mediation. 

Kant points out that the manifold, empirical forms of nature are left indeterminate after application of determining judgments. The pure concepts of the understanding do not and cannot explain empirical diversity among the sciences.  The only way that particular empirical forms can be determinate is through reflecting judgment.  Such judgments are necessary to have a unified, meaningful experience of the manifold empirical forms left indeterminate by application of the pure concepts of the understanding. 

In Section V of the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant reflects in a sustained way on reflecting judgment in general.  He declares: 

To  reflect . . . is to hold given presentations up to, and compare them with, either other presentations or one's cognitive power [itself], in reference to a concept that this [comparison] makes possible (CJ, 400).  

Reflection demands a principle, says Kant, a transcendent principle.

Yet [reflecting judgment] which seeks concepts even for empirical presentations, qua empirical, must make for this [end] this further assumption: it must assume that nature, with its boundless diversity has hit upon a division of this diversity into genera and species that enables our judgment to find accordance among the natural forms it compares, and [so] enables it to arrive at empirical concepts, as well as at coherence among these by ascending to concepts that are more general [though] also empirical.  In other words, judgment presupposes a system of nature even in terms of empirical laws, and it does so a priori and hence be means of a transcendental principle (CJ, 400, fn. 21).  

 Kant claims that we must presuppose that nature displays particular forms that we can cognize "in terms of universal laws" (CJ, 400).  Not to presuppose this would mean that "all our reflection would be performed merely haphazardly and blindly" (CJ, 401).  He points out that with respect to determining judgments, judgment requires no special principle by which to reflect.  But for reflecting judgments, this is not the case. Indeed, "judgment needs for it's reflection a principle of its own, a principle that is also transcendental" (CJ, 401).  So what is presupposed "whenever we compare empirical presentations in order to cognize . . . empirical laws and specific forms that conform to them?" (CJ, 401).  Kant responds: 

What is presupposed is that nature, even in its empirical laws, has adhered to a certain parsimony suitable for our judgment, and adhered to a uniformity we can grasp: and this presupposition must precede all comparison, as a priori principle of judgment (CJ, 401). 

And what does this suggest about a reflecting judgment and how it might differ from the seeming algorithms by which the pure concepts of the understanding order nature? 

It does not deal with them [natural things] mechanically . . . like an instrument, guided by the understanding and the senses; it deals with them artistically, in terms of a principle that is universal but also indeterminate: the principle of a purposive arrangement of nature in a system -- an arrangement [made], as it were, for the benefit of our judgment -- by which the particular natural laws (about which the understanding says nothing) are [made] suitable for the possibility of experience as a system, as we must presuppose if we are to have any hope of finding our way in [the] labyrinth [resulting] form the diversity of possible particular laws (CJ, 402).  

While reflecting judgments have their origin in a transcendental principle, Kant claims that it is a principle merely for "the logical use of judgment" (CJ, 402).  This use consists in classifying the diverse: 

[We must] compare several classes, each falling under a definite concept; and when these classes are completely [enumerated] in terms of their common characteristic, we must subsume them under higher classes (genera), until we reach the concept containing the principle of the entire classification (and constituting the highest genus) (CJ, 402).  

In so doing, Kant says, we "make the universal concept specific by indicate the diverse [that falls] under it" (CJ, 403).  Kant is dealing here with the universal problem of the assumed homomorphism between the structure of knowing and the structure of being, a homomorphism making possible the knowing of that being.  Kant continues: 

It is clear that reflecting judgment . . . cannot undertake to classify all of nature in terms of its empirical variety unless it presupposes that nature itself makes its transcendental laws specific in terms of some principle.  Now this principle can only by that of [nature's] appropriateness for the power of judgment itself . . . to find among things . . sufficient kinship to be able to bring them under empirical concepts (classes), and bring these under more general laws (higher genera), and so arrive at an empirical system of nature. Now this kind of classification is not [derived from] ordinary empirical cognition, but is artificial:  . . . so far as we think of nature as making itself specific in terms of such a principle, we regard nature as art. . . Hence judgment's own principle is: Nature, for the sake of the power of judgment, makes its universal laws specific [and] into empirical ones, according to the form of a logical system (CJ, 403-04).  

It is now time to talk of nature's Zweckmaessigkeit (purposiveness).  Purposiveness, for Kant, belongs not to reason, but to reflective judgment.  Reason would determinately judge purpose to be in the thing-in-itself.  But reason's powers are not up to this task.  Any talk of purposiveness must relate to reflecting judgment. "It is posited sole in the subject: in the subject's mere power to reflect" (CJ, 404).  

For we call something purposive if its existence seems to presuppose a presentation of that same thing; [and] natural laws are constituted, and related to one another, as if judgment had designed them for its own need[s] are [indeed] similar to [the cases where] the possibility of [certain] things presupposes that these things are based on a presentation of them. Hence judgment, by means of its principle, things of nature as purposive, in [the way] nature makes its forms specific through empirical laws (CJ, 404).  

Reflecting judgment does not "carve the beast of reality at its joints" (Plato), nor lay down algorithmically the rules by which nature must operate.  Rather such judgment allows us to think nature as purposive, not in terms of the purpose of each natural object, but rather in regard to "their relation to one another," that is in so far as "the suitability which, despite their great diversity, they have for a logical system of empirical concepts" (CJ, 404).   

The point is that nature is present to us in a manifold manner, but determine judgments and the pure concepts of the understanding cannot think the manifold with respect to its empirical specificity. Thus, a different principle of the unity of the manifold  must determine their necessity. This principle which concerns the unity of the empirical manifold must be the principle of reflecting judgment.  

Since this faculty does not concern the understanding and its laws, it must display its own principle. The principle of the unity of the empirical manifold just is the principle of the reflective faculty of judgment. Recall this passage from the Critique of Pure Reason.   

However exaggerated and absurd it may sound to say that the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature, and so of its formal unity, such an assertion in nonetheless correct and is in keeping with the object to which it refers, namely experience. Certainly, empirical laws as such can never derive their origin from the pure understanding. That is as little possible as to conceive completely the inexhaustible multiplicity of appearances merely by reference to the pure form of sensible intuition. But all empirical laws are only special determinations of the pure laws of the understanding, under which, and according to the norm of which, they first become possible (A127-8).  

The empirical laws are "special determinations" of the universal laws of the understanding. The latter make the former possible. In the footnote to Section 2 of the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant is clearly aware of the problem of connecting these two.  

The possibility of an experience in general is the possibility of empirical cognitions as synthetic judgments. Hence this possibility cannot be derived analytically from a mere comparison of perceptions . . . for the connection of two different perceptions in the concept of an object (to yield a cognition of it) is a synthesis, and the only way in which this synthesis makes empirical cognition, i.e., experience, possible is through principles [(Prinzipien)] of the synthetic unity of appearances, i.e., through principles [(Grundsätze)] by which they are brought under the categories. Now these empirical cognitions do form an analytic unity of all experience according to that which they necessarily have in common (namely those transcendental laws of nature), but they do not form that synthetic unity of experience as a system that connects the empirical laws even according to that in which they differ (and where their diversity can be infinite) (CJ, 393, fn. 2). 

In the Critique of Pure Reason, application of the understanding to appearances resulted in a synthetic unity of apperception such that the understanding legislated the general laws of nature.  Kant here calls this "analytic" by virtue of their transcendental nature in our empirical cognition of nature. It is with regard to the further problem of the unity of the manifold of nature's empirical forms they are analytical because they deal with what all experiences have in common. Since they cannot speak to how different empirical laws actually differ, they cannot ground the synthetic unity of the empirical laws of nature. 

Universal laws tell us what empirical objects have in common. But the homogeneous nature of this domain cannot account for the heterogeneous nature of the actual empirical world. Universal principles do not allow exploration of the particularity and the concreteness of empirical experience.  The Critique of Judgment is interested in the synthetic unity of the empirical laws in so far as these laws or heterogeneous.  There are, after all, many more conditions to empirical objects other than simply being in time and space and subject to universal laws of synthesis.  Kant knows that "specifically different natures, apart from what they have in common as belonging to nature in general, can still be causes in an infinite variety of ways."  

Kant understands that the universal laws of nature legislated by understanding, while granting explanation in nature in terms of universal laws of motion, nonetheless are inadequate in connecting the heterogeneity of nature.  For this we need principles allowing systematicity. Since systematicity presupposes "purposiveness" (Zweckmaessigkeit), we must have recourse to the latter category in order for nature not to be utterly chaotic. 

 Kant claimed in the Critique of Pure Reason that were there no pure concepts of understanding, there would be only a "rhapsody of perceptions."  But Kant is dealing with a similar problem of rhapsody with respect to reflecting judgment.  If we did not assume an a priori principle regulating the synthetic unity of particular forms in the manifold experience of nature, we could not connect these particular forms.  But this a priori of reflecting judgment is not the a priori of the understanding, but rather one that is merely regular, heuristic, and subjectively necessary.  

For Kant, "nature specifies its universal laws according to the principle of purposiveness for our cognitive faculty."  Through reflecting judgment our empirical cognitions can be placed into a coherent unity.  Such reflecting judgments form the transcendental ground common to both our aesthetic and teleological experience of nature in the manifold of particular forms. Such judgments mediating understanding and reason, finally account for the overall unity of our cognitive and moral lives.  

One might also think of things this way: Given our experience of the world and apparent teleological systems we find in it, e.g., biological organisms or human psychology, how can we think such teleology?  How can we think purpose? It is excluded, after all, from the domain of nature resulting from our legislation of the pure concepts of understanding.  Where might it be?  It cannot be asserted of things in themselves, because such a metaphysical assertion would be a "transcendental illusion." We may encounter purpose practically in our moral lives, but how does that practical encounter relate to our theories?  So how can we account for the purpose we find in biology and the purpose we find in ourselves and our moral lives if we cannot find purpose through our legislations of understanding and reason?  Kant believes reflecting judgments make purposiveness possible.  We shall now turn explicitly to Pluhar's argument to see whether Kant has succeeded in his efforts to find in reflecting judgment the mediator of understanding and reason.  

Musings on Causality, Divinity and Resurrection

It took a very long time before I could see things clearly.  

Growing up, I contemplated both God and science.   They always seemed in tension.  It did not help, of course, that my eighth grade confirmation pastor made me recite Luther's explanation to the First Article in from of the church with the prefix added, "In defiance of the theory of evolution, I believe that God has created me and all creatures . . . "

Although I did not know it at the time, I was already struggling with some pretty deep issues in the logic of explanation.   If one could explain why something was the case by pointing to laws and antecedent physical events and processes, what exactly was there left for God to do?  If I explained x both by divine intentionality D and some set of physical events E coupled with physical laws L, then in what sense is D, or perhaps E and L superfluous?  If x would not have happened without D, then surely E and L cannot form a complete explanation of x.   But E and L do form a complete explanation of x, therefore by modus tollens, x would have happened without D, and thus D is causally irrelevant.

The general problem is one of causal overdetermination, and confronts us as well in the philosophy of mind.  If mental event M1 explains M2, and M1 is physically realized by a set of brain events P1, and P1 causes a set of brain events P2, and P2 is the physical realization of M2, then in what sense is M1 qua M1 -- that is, M1 in so far as it is M1 -- causally efficacious in producing M2?  Does not the mental become merely epiphenomenal on neurophysiology, a "wheel idly turning" (Wittgenstein) as it were?  Is this not clearly a situation in which mental explanation fails to articulate the deepest causal map of the universe, and thus is in principle reducible to brain explanation or, better yet, can be eliminated in favor of the latter?

Consider the healing of Mary from stage four liver cancer.  This event -- let's call it m -- is supposedly effected by God's intentionality and power D.  If God healed Mary, then clearly D causally produces m.  But Mary's healing is physically realized as some set of micro-physical actualizations S.   While there was once a time -- e.g., in pre-physicalist ages -- when one might have said that D causally produces S without means, that option is not available to most people today.   Our time assumes the principle of the causal closure of the physical,  for each and every physical event p, there is some set of physical events E that causally produces p, and for each and every physical event p, p cannot and does not produce events that are not physical.  But if D does not produce m without means, then there is some set of physical events that is the physical realization of D such that these events cause m.  

It has been axiomatic in theology since the late Enlightenment to conceive God-talk non-causally.   What I mean by this, is that the giving of an interpretation to theological language such as 'God creates the universe' does not involve one in the drawing of a causal relation across the disparate ontological domains of supernature and nature.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America slogan, "God's work, our hands," nicely captures the situation:  Divine agency is physically realizable!   God's working of Y is realizable through the means of some set of individuals P acting in particular ways -- let's say that the set of individuals P instantiates a complex set of relations Q.   Thus, when P instantiates Q -- or perhaps when P acts Q-ly -- then Y obtains.   But the question is obvious: How is Y qua Y a divine act when it is physically realizable as P acting Q-ly?   More simply put, how is divine agency possible in means, when causal explanations in terms of the means is sufficient?   Do we not have a case of causal overdetermination here when allowing the divine explanation to track alongside the physical?  

The solution to all of this is to offer a model of theological language in which prima facie causal terms are given a non-causal analysis.  This worked very well in ages dominated by idealist pre-suppositions.  Accordingly, 'God creates' is a way of talking about some reality deeper than the causal.  Perhaps there is a reality of "Being-itself" that is deeper than the realm of particular beings, a realm that is somehow more profound than the causal, an ontological depth of being presupposed by the ontic structure of being in which beings are causally related to other beings.  Maybe although causal talk here is in some sense misapplied, the language of the causal somehow illuminates the depth dimension of the human such that the language is nonetheless theologically vindicated.  Thus, while God does not really cause the bringing about of Mary's healing, the saying of 'God healed Mary' does illuminate or make sense out of one's existential situation and the seeming mystery of grace, the getting of that which one is ultimately not earned or deserved.   Saying that 'God healed Mary' seems to say more than there is some set of physical events that occurred -- though they cannot be fully specified -- that when instantiated brought about some set of physical events in Mary such that the term 'healed' could be applied to her.

One might, of course, complain that my concerns with 'God heals Mary' are somehow merely a problem for the philosopher.  While philosophers are concerned with semantics, the meaning of terms and the truth-values of the propositions comprised by them, semantics is not a problem for the believer reading the Bible.  Why allow the abstractions of fundamental theology (proto-theology), a theology that is most immediately relatable to First Article concerns, to transgress upon the hallowed domain of Christology and the proclamation of Christ's life giving death and resurrection?   Why not simply preach Christ and let semantics take care of itself?

Imagine listenting to preacher Pete proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead and that because of this the future has been conquered and that salvation is at hand.   One could, I suppose, simply listen to Pete and not think deeply about what his pronouncements mean and what the truth-conditions of the propositions he utters are.  (The truth-conditions of a proposition are those which must obtain in order for the proposition to be true.)  One might somehow be able to say, "OK, I don't know exactly what Pete's meaning when he talks of Christ's resurrection, but I will regard the resurrection to be true."  But this strategy does not work well when Molly asks what is meant by 'resurrection'.   At this point, one must either give some truth-condition for 'Christ is resurrected', or simply say that one does not know.  But if the latter, then Molly will say, "If you don't know what is meant by 'Christ is resurrected', then you don't know what it would mean for Christ not to be resurrected, and if you don't know that, then clearly to say "'Christ is resurrected' is true" is to say nothing at all."

To this, one simply has to change the subject.   While one might hope that one is meaning something even if one is not sure what one is meaning, there is no basis for the hope: Without knowing precisely what situation must obtain for 'Christ is resurrected' to be false, one knows not what 'Christ is resurrected' means.  Therefore, despite emotions to the contrary, to be told 'Christ is resurrected' is not to be told anything in particular -- and thus a fortiori not anything at all.  Sometimes for the sake of the Gospel one must say things as they are.  What is at stake is too important to do otherwise.

In the early days of Christianity, disciples knew that Christ's resurrection was tied to an empty tomb.  'Christ is resurrected' is false if the tomb is not empty.  The assertion had falsifiability conditions.   While the tomb being empty is not sufficient for Christ's resurrection, it is nonetheless necessary for it.  Christ's resurrection thus had a physical realization, and because that resurrection was tied to both the future and salvation, there was a physical dimension to both the future and salvation as well.   Just as Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead, so too will all who sleep in the Lord be physically resurrected as well.   The coherence of soteriology depended up the physical realization of salvation.  While death was real, Christ's resurrected life could conquer it.

What I am saying is something quite sensible: Christ's physical resurrection and God's causal action producing it was itself understood in the tradition as causally-productive of human salvation.   Human salvation was an effect of divine agency, a causal action drawn across disparate ontological domains.  After all, there is no physical realization of 'Molly is dead' that in itself can causally produce 'Molly is alive'.  While 'God's work' can be realized perhaps in the work of human hands, 'Molly is being raised from the dead' has no known physical realization.

Simply put, while 'God creates the heavens and the earth' can be given a non-causal analysis it is not clear that a similar non-causal strategy can be given for 'God resurrects Jesus'.  The latter connects with the notion of salvation in a very intimate way -- as long as salvation is thought to be physically realized.  Of course, we are living in a time in which people are increasingly thinking that death is not an enemy.  If 'death' and 'life' are taken as descriptions of how we live rather than the fact that we live, then there may come a time when 'Mary's salvation' in no way depends upon the fact that she will live.  That time, which is increasingly our time, does truly recall the time of the Gnostics and their heresies.  

The first step in seeking treatment is realizing that one is sick.  If we do not realize the importance of semantics in theology, we shall not grasp the important theological work that must now be done.  It is irrational to hope for something of which it can be said that one does not know if one has it.

Metaphysics and Ontology V

The Question of Demonstrative Science

Like all medieval theologians, Luther was well-educated and very interested in logic.  He knew his Aristotle very well, lecturing on the great philosopher when in graduate school.  It is thus important that we know something about Aristotle's views on demonstration if we are to get clear on what Luther is doing in his more technical work where he thunders against "a logic of faith."

Aristotle argued in the Posterior Analytics that the deepest scientific knowledge of a thing required that thing to be grasped in terms of its necessitating causes.  Accordingly, the demonstrative syllogism produced the deepest knowledge (Eileen Sirene, "Demonstrative Science," in Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 497).  Through such a syllogism knowledge of the fact was established (demonstratio quia) as well as knowledge of why this fact must obtain (demonstratio propter quid).

Toward the end of the first quarter of the 13th century, Robert Grosseteste became the first in the Latin west to comment on Aristotle's entire Posterior Analytics.  While he agrees with Anselm and others that the truth of a thing is its conformity with the rationes in the divine mind, he holds that the truth of a proposition is found in the conformity between what the proposition asserts and what is the case (Sirene, p. 502).  Grosseteste's commitment to a theory of divine illumination affects his interpretation of the Posterior Analytics.  While Aristotle indicated that experience and induction lead to an intuitive grasp of first premises in demonstrative proofs, Grosseteste grounds first premises in a "direct or indirect irradiation of his mind by divine light" (p.503).  Without such illumination no certainty is possible.

Aquinas downplays illumination as a necessary epistemic feature of this life, claiming with Aristotle that we can grant first principles and definitions through experience.  As it turns out, Aquinas assigns to the role of demonstrative science a small subset of the set of all truths, for most of what we claim to know is opinion, not scientia.  The latter demands both demonstratio quia and demonstratio propter quid, something lacking in the former.

Scotus relaxes the Aristotelian requirement that knowledge of something demands that one know why it necessarily happens.  Because of his commitment to the potentia dei absoluta, Scotus denies that knowing x presupposes that we know why x must be what it is.   The fact that it is an x is completely consistent with the possibility God could have willed ~x.  Scotus thus changes the nature of demonstrative science from the project of discerning what is necessary in nature to finding instead what is possible or compossible within it.  This has repercussions for his theory.  While demonstrative science could establish the connections among general truths, it is incapable of explaining why this particular was instantiated at this particular time.  This cannot be proved because God could always have changed his mind and not brought that particular into being. Here as elsewhere, voluntarism seems to push towards nominalism and the contingency of the individual.  

The great architect of the via moderna, William Ockham follows Aristotle in claiming that better known premises provide warrant to affirm the truth of those propositions entailed by them.  But, he realizes that "the resulting sciences are collections of true propositions, and not necessarily a mirror of the inner constitution of nature" (p. 513).  They can be only contingent propositions because God is the only necessary being.  Ockham does say that knowledge acquired by demonstration is not different in kind from knowledge by experience (p. 514), but understands this to mean that demonstrative knowledge needs to presuppose experience, not the other way around.  Jean Buridan follows Ockham on the difficulties of establishing an Aristotelian demonstrative science of nature, holding instead that such reasonings must allow for linking propositions which are almost always true with others of the same kind (p. 517).

Metaphysics and Ontology IV

E. What is the Role of the Senses in Acquiring Knowledge?

We have been surveying some of the metaphysical issues of the fourteenth century, issues that were still of concern when Luther was studying for his M.A. at Erfurt. We have discussed the question as to the proper subject matter of metaphysics, the relationship between the essence and existence of a thing, the issue of actuality and potency in incorporeal beings, and the question of the ontological status of universals with concomitant inquiry into the nature of individuation and identity.  Another important issue for 14th century theologians concerned itself with the metaphysics of knowing and the reliability of sense perception in acquiring knowledge.  Since the development of Christianity presupposed an Augustinian standpoint in which philosophy is in conformity with the revealed tenants of the christian faith, the task was to retain the harmony of faith and reason while still allowing empirical  access of, and affording general ontological status to, the external, non-divine world.

It is important to recall that Augustine and much of the Christian tradition presupposed the doctrine of divine illumination, holding that the mind confronts not its own concepts or ideas, but ideae, rationes, forms or species.  These were trans-subjective entities, not "subjective mental features" (Owens, "Faith, Ideas, Illumination and Experience," in The Cambridge History of Latter Medieval Philosophy, p. 442).  As Aristotle was rediscovered in the West, however, it became more important to give an account of the possibility and limits of knowledge gained through sensation, an account that sometimes produced considerable tension with the older illumination theory.  The problem was how to proceed in producing such an account, when knowledge was thought to be an incorporeal affair.  In other words,  how could the realm of the corporeal cause the suitable movements in the incorporeal assumed necessary for knowledge?  Whereas the Neoplatonic illumination starting point privileged the ontological status of ideas over material objects, (and in so doing assumed that secondary substance had more reality than primary substance), the Aristotelian focus on the ontology of primary substances seemingly reversed the situation entirely, affording no real existence to ideas -- and demoting secondary substance to a matter of the conceptual.

In the early part of the thirteenth century William of Auxerre tried to reconcile the older view of the divine illumination of religious faith with Aristotle's notion that we can attain knowledge through the senses.  He did this through developing Aristotle's assertion in De Anima that "the soul is in a way all things" (p.445).  William reasoned that although the thing known is potentially in the knower, the material intellect nonetheless had to receive its species from corporeal objects (p. 446).  The material intellect must receive the form abstracted from sensible things, forms called by his time species.   Owens writes: "the existence of things in the Augustinian intelligible world was being aligned with their potential existence in the soul's material intellect, and in each case 'existence' was regarded as metaphorical" (446).

William, however, rejected the Aristotelian notion of the active intellect, believing instead that the material intellect could itself know singulars and universals, and make true judgments about them.  (His view might be regarded as a precursor to the positions assumed by Hobbes, Locke and the other empiricists, for the object itself somehow impresses its species upon the thinker thereby forming an idea.)   Albert the Great, however, writing in 1245 advocates that an agent intellect is clearly needed in order to get the species into the material intellect.  He writes, "".  .  . unumquodque phantasma set particular determinatum: et ideo neccese est ponere agem universale in intellectu" (Summa de creatione II, 55, 1, ad 2m; Owens, p. 448).   The light of the active intellect, supplemented by the light of the uncreated intelligible light, abstracted the species from the sense particular and "lit" up the material intellect by so doing.   In combining the Aristotelian idea of abstracting the species and  forming the potential intellect with the notion of light, Albert attempted to retain Augustinian-inspired illumination theory even while moving towards an Aristotelian position on knowing the objects of the senses.   Roger Bacon, however, rejects what he sees as Albert's concession to Aristotle, holding instead that the operation of the potential and active intellect can be wholly understandable from the standpoint of Augustinian illumination theory.

As is well-known, Thomas Aquinas wholly rejected illumination theory, holding knowledge depended upon an identity in difference between the human knower and the object known.  He writes:  "Secundum autem quod intelligit res alias, intellectum in actu fit unum cum intellectu in actu, inquantum forma intellecti fit forma intellectus, inquantum est intellectus in actu, non quod sit ipsamet essential intellectus . . . quia essentia intellectus manet uno sub daubus formis secundum quod intelligit res duas successive" (Aquinas, Sent., 49, 2, 1, ad 10m; Owens, p. 452).  While Aquinas spoke of universals existing in the thing, this way of speaking was derived from the actual existence of universals only in the mind (453).

Three more thinkers deserve comment, Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus and William Ockham.  While we mentioned all three before, we did not connect any of the three to the question of illumination and the intellect.   As we discussed earlier, Henry spoke of the intentional object having a type of existence (esse essentia) that could be distinguished from the actual existence of the thing (esse actualis existentiae).  Henry thereby explicitly connects the possession of true sense knowledge with the doctrine of divine illumination (Owens, 454).  Scotus rejected illumination theory, claiming that the divide between particulars that really exist and universals that are mere abstractions from particulars is too sharp, and accordingly there must be some common nature by virtue of which Socrates and Plato are common to men and not Socrates and a tugboat.  Some type of unity and commonness must exist outside the mind, grounding the human mind's abstraction of a common nature among objects.  This nature was thought to be formally distinct from the haeccity (or individuating nature) of a thing.  Scotus held that this nature could be known either intuitively as existing or abstractly without regard to existence.  In a tipping of the hat towards illumination, Scotus admitted that considered abstractly an object's common nature could be seen to lie before the gaze of the mind illuminated by the divine.  William of Ockham rejected the notion of illumination entirely, however, claiming that special divine intervention could cause intuitive cognition in a subject even in the absence of an object.  Accordingly, it was not the character of the object that distinguished abstract and intuitive knowledge, but the nature of the acts themselves (p. 457).

Since there was rich discussion of intuitive and abstractive cognition in the fourteenth century, it might be useful to reflect more deeply on the distinction between intuitive and abstractive cognition.   Scotus held that the fundamental distinction between abstractive and intuitive cognition is modal: the latter deals with what is possible or necessary, while the former deals with what is actual (John Boler, "Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 465).  Ockham understands intuitive cognition to concern the apprehension by which contingent propositions are cognized, and abstractive cognition simply as a cognition that is not intuitive.  For Ockham, intuitive cognition is "caused by this one rather than that one" (Bohler, p. 468).  Yet, pace Scotus, the object need not exist for Ockham to have an intuitive knowledge of it.  The distinction between the two can be understood this way: Scotus believes that the proper place for an act of knowledge to begin is in the object, Ockham holds that it properly commences in an act of unconditional beginning.  God causing an intuitive act of cognition in the absence of an object nonetheless forms an unconditional beginning to the act. Indeed, God can cause apparent intuitive knowledge of all kinds of non-existents through His potentia dei absoluta, the absolute power of God whereby he can do anything that does not involve a contradiction.  Interestingly enough, however, appeal to potentia dei absoluta did not seem to spur development of skeptical thinking in the 14th century as did Descartes' analogous appeal to the "evil demon" two centuries later.

It is intriguing to contrast Ockham, Scotus and Thomas on knowledge of singulars.   For Ockham, knowledge occurs through the application of the concept to the individual; for Scotus, through the apprehension of unity of the individual represented by a set of characteristics; for Thomas, by means of the "construction" of the object by the intellect through the organization of sensory data (Boler, p. 476).  The intellect, according to Thomas, provides the form by which the sensory manifold is constructed.  While Aquinas' view might have some similarities with Kant, the trajectory of Scotus and Okham is definitely toward the ontology of the individual assumed at the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Metaphysics and Ontology III

C.  The Question of Potency and Actuality in Incorporeal Creatures and the Possibility of Universal Hylomorphism 

While those defending a real distinction between esse and essentia regarded the latter as in potency to actualization by the former, those rejecting it simply conceived potency as all of that which God could have brought about, even though He had perhaps not done so.  Accordingly, those in the first camp could speak of a "subjective potency" (potentia subjectiva) of the essentia toward existence, while those in the second claimed there was only an "objective potency" (potentia objective) of the nonexistent esse/essentia complex toward existence (Wippel, p. 407).  While subjective potency presupposes there is a subject which could either have existence or not, objective potency simply asserts that while a substance with its qualities in fact does not exist, it nonetheless could.  Thinking of existence E as a predicate, the first claims that there is an x such that Ex, while the second that there is not an x such that Ex.

Universal hylomorphism approached the question by claiming that the form/matter distinction applies to all of created reality, even the realm of the incorporeal.  Advocates included Roger Bacon, Bonaventure and Gonsalvus of Spain.  Critics were legion, including William of Auvergne, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Godrey of Fountains.  Those of the first camp generally regarded Avicebron or Augstine as adumbrating their own views, while thinkers of the second group appealed to Aristotle in substantiating their position.  Thinkers divided on the notion of prime matter, with advocates of universal hylomorphism tending to opt for a realm of pure potentiality, e.g., Albert, Thomas, Siger and Giles.  The Franciscans, on the other hand, seemingly advocated that any definite matter whatsoever had some degree of actualization, because actualization is necessary for matter to be definite and particular. Representatives included Richard of Middleton, Scotus, Henry of Ghent and William of Ockham.

D.  The Question of Universals 

 Plato had famously held that universals such as 'man' and 'whiteness' exist part from their instantiation in existent objects.  Those committed to such a view in the Middle Ages are generally termed "realists," asserting that universals are real regardless of their worldly exemplification and  their relationship to the thinker.  Moderate realists, on the other hand, claimed to be following Aristotle in holding that natures really do exist in individual things of which they are their natures.  If a bovine nature exists in Gertrude, Bessy and Bossie -- a general nature by virtue of which each of the three is a cow -- what is it that ultimately individuates Gertrude from Bessie and Bossie?   Is it the accidents of Gertrude that make her not Bessy?  But this seems wrong on Aristotelian grounds because the primary substances which Gertrude and Bessy are must individuate apart from any accidents.  But what could be a metaphysical constituent of a substance that individuates particular cows?  If not an accident, then perhaps it could be an individual nature.  Yet if such a nature exists, what is its relationship to the general nature by which each of the three individuals are cattle?  These issues dominated metaphysical discussion in the fourteenth century.

Duns Scotus famously argued the general nature common to each individual, must someone exist in each individual without a possibility of existing apart from some individual or other.  If Jack is going to be more similar to Jill than a tugboat, then there must be something common to Jack and Jill that is not found in Jack and the tugboat.  This common nature, which exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, is nonetheless not numerically one.  Marilyn McCord Adams writes that for Scotus, "human nature is numerically one in Socrates and numerically many in numerically many distinct particulars, or thisnesses, that are numerically one and particular of themselves and that contract the nature, which is common of itself, rendering the nature numerically one and particular as well" (Adams, "Universals in the Fourteenth Century," Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, p. 413).  Just as Socrates is particularly white by virtue of the inherence of whiteness in him, so is he particularly Socrates by virtue of the particular contraction of the general nature in him.  Accordingly, human nature cannot be universal in re because it is not numerically one and particular in itself.  For Scotus, it is simply axiomatic that nothing predicable of many can be numerically one and particular.  But while the universal cannot exist in re because it is neither numerically one and particular, Scotus admits that it can exist in mente as an object of thought.

Scotus' position is that the nature which is one from the standpoint of what it denominates, is nonetheless many in numerically distinct particulars.  So what is the relationship of this one and many?  Here Soctus introduces his notion of a formal distinction: "The nature and contracting difference are formally distinct, or not formally the same" (Adams, p. 414).  While Scotus offers different metaphysical accounts of how this is possible, he seems to settle on discriminating between a distinctio simpliciter and a distinctio secundum quid.  While every man is an animal, and man is not metaphysically distinct from animal, they are formally distinct in that animal has "more perfection" than man because it can be predicated of more things (Adams, p. 416).  

William of Ockham took a very dim view of Scotus' metaphysical machinations stating, in fact, that Scotus' position is internally incoherent.  He has a number of arguments that I won't rehearse here.  Maybe the best of his arguments is the following:

• Scotus holds that the principle of individuation (e.g., what makes Socrates Socrates) or contracting difference is numerically one and particular, and thus cannot be common to numerically distinct particulars.  (Assumption 1)
• He also assumes that the nature and contracting difference are formally distinct, that is, not formally the same.  (Assumption 2)
• According to Ockham, however, on assumption 1 it is not metaphysically (or logically) possible for the humanity of Socrates to exist without Socrateity.  This is the case, even though it is logically possible for Socrates to exist without a particular whiteness existing in him.  
• More generally, no contracting principle that operates on a general nature to particularize it is contingently instantializable; e.g., the humanity in Socrates can only be Socrates' humanity and the humanity in Plato can only be Plato's humanity. Therefore, it is not possible that one and the same nature can exist in many things.  (Contradicting Assumption 2)

There are a number of other positions in the fourteenth century that deserve at least some mention.  Walter Burley attempts a moderate realism claiming that "the whole universal (secundum se totum) exists in each of its particulars and is not numerically multiplied by its existence in numerically distinct particulars" (Adams, p. 423).  Henry of Harclay, along with Ockham, attacked Burley's views, the former holding that "everything that exists in reality is essentially singular -- i.e., logically incapable of existing or, as a constituent of, numerically many simultaneously" (429).   Henry believes that individual substances act on the intellect in two ways, either confusedly or distinctly: "The universal is a thing confusedly conceived, and a particular is the same thing distinctly conceived" (430).   A universal and particular are thus the same thing, although they are distinct in reason.  (One might say, they could be described differently.)  Throughout the 14th century nominalism gained strength, even if it was not always able to show that its realist opponents were committed to explicit contradiction.  At some point, the attempt to save realist vocabulary seemed to many disputants simply obscurantist with regard to the underlying metaphysical facts.

Metaphysics and Ontology II

B.  The Question of the Distinction between the Essence and the Existence of a Thing

It is important to realize that medieval philosophers assumed a very large ontological domain.  They needed not only to account for the metaphysical constitution of the material objects encountered in the world, but also incorporeal beings like God, angels and human souls. While God's metaphysical simplicity and His necessary, uncaused character presented a unique challenge to general metaphysical principles, created entities such as angels seemed to cry out for a metaphysical framework of the created order wide enough to include their constitution. The medieval question of the relationship between essentia (essence) and esse (existence) in created beings arose because of the need to cast a metaphysical account broad enough to include both corporeal and incorporeal created beings.

Boethius first suggested that entities had two aspects: essence and existence.  In Axiom II of his De Hebdomadibus, he writes, Diversum est esse et id quod est . . .   In Axiom VIII he opines, Omni composito ilid est esse, aliud ipsum est (Wippel, 392, fn. 38).  These comments seemingly conform with Avicenna's view that existence and existence are robustly distinct. Averroes and followers demurred, arguing that if an object has real being only by virtue of that which is superadded to essence, then why not claim there is something else superadded to existence making it even more real (393)?  Boethius' comments and the differing interpretative traditions of Avicenna and Averroes set the stage for this metaphysical controversy.

Aquinas advocated the real metaphysical constitution of essence and existence, suggesting in his youthful De ente et essentia that essence or quiddity is the potency of any created being which can be actualized into existence by God.  While the first is necessary for understanding of the thing, the second is not, coming, as it were, from outside the thing's quiddity and uniting with its essence in composing the real thing.  In the Summa contra Gentiles Thomas writes, . . . et sic in quodlibet creato aliud est nature rei quae participat esse, et aliud ipsum esse participatum (SCG I, q. 13).  The participating nature is in potential to the actuality of the participated nature. As Wippel points out, over and against Avicenna, for Aquinas, since "existence has no quidditative content in addition to that of the essence which it actualizes," . . . "neither essence nor existence can exist independently of each other"(395).  Thomas writes: Unde patet quod hoc quod dico esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfection omnium perfection (q. 7, a. 2, ad 9).  To say that existence (esse) "is the actuality of all acts and the perfection of all perfections" is to claim that ens (a being) participates in esse (to-beness).  Essentia both receives and limits esse and thereby produces ens. Real composition is necessary in a being in order to account for the quidditive limitation of that being.

While Aquinas held to the real distinction of esse and essentia, he did not employ the infelicitous language of Giles of Rome who asserted in his Theoremata de esse et essentia that esse et essentia sent duae res (th. 19, p. 127), and that since res ergo ipsa quod est esse est in genere substantiae, it is per consequens intelligitur quod esse sit alia res ab essentia (Giles, q. 9 & q. 11, in Wippel, p. 392).  Giles clearly is trying to account for all of created being in analogy with the form/matter distinction for material entities: Dicemus ergo sicut generatio facit scire materiam aliud esse a forma, sic creatio facit nos scire essentiam esse aliud ab esse (th. 5, q. 9).  Giles' use of res in characterizing both esse and essentia suggests a very robust, real esse/essentia distinction, and it was his formulation of real distinction that was severely criticized by Siger of Brabant, Godfrey of Fontaines and William of Ockham.

Siger admitted that ens was composite, but instead of construing this composition along the form/matter analogy, he suggested that the analogy between substance and accident is better.  Godfrey claimed the distinction was only secundum rationem (according to reason) and not due to the metaphysical composition of the thing.  Godfrey, in fact, argued for a real identity between esse and essentia, for whatever can be said truly of the first can be said truly of the second and vice versa (Wippel, p. 401).  Essentia has only potential being prior to God's bringing it to be.  Since the significatio of essentia and esse are the same, the two must be identical.  Ockham mounted ingenious philosophical arguments against the real distinction of esse and essentia, claiming that if former were really distinct from the latter, then it would have to be either a substance or accident.  But it is neither an accident because esse is not a quality or quantity, nor a substance because esse is neither a matter, form, their composite, or a separate entity (Wippel, p. 402).  His modal argument precedes thusly:  If a and b are distinct then it is possible for a to obtain without b, or for b to obtain without a.  But it is not possible for God to create essentia without esse or esse without essentia, therefore esse and essentia are not distinct.

Henry of Ghent, James of Viterbo and Duns Scotus sought to establish a position between a real ontological distinction between esse and essentia, and their ontological identity which possesses only a distinction according to reason (secundum rationem).  Henry of Ghent's views, though not widely affirmed in the subsequent tradition, are nevertheless quite interesting.  Anticipating Meinong, he affords a type of being to essences (esse essentiae) that is not existential.  Because God exists and has knowledge of all possible and existing entities, essential being has a type of existence prior to actual existential instantiation.  The divine will thus communicates actual existence (esse existentiae) to a subclass of esse essentiae entities.  Henry ingeniously opts for a new type of distinction, one of intention, in sorting esse and essentia.  While the existence of a thing does not add to its essentia, the external relation of actually being efficiently caused by God in creation marks a third path between a real distinction and real identity.  Esse essentiae is sorted from esse existentiae) by the fact that God has actually created the second.

James of Viterbo apparently tried to distinguish between essentia and esse semantically, according to primary and secondary significance.  While the modus significandi (mode of signification) of an abstract term signifies only the thing's essence, that of a concrete term, while signifying essentia primarily, signifies secondarily the thing having esse.  So existentia signifies essentia primarily and secondarily it signifies that which is conjoined with essentia in an existing subject (Wippel, p. 405).  Finally, and most famously, Duns Scotus searched for an intermediate position by admitting that while esse and essentia are not separable in contingent fact, they are not identical in all possible worlds.  Although oftentimes referred to as the "formal distinction," Scotus scholars have differed on what precisely is meant.  Scotus also opines that while abstract cognition has essentia as its proper object, intuitive cognition has existentia.  Whether either this epistemic point or the modal point legitimately establishes a formal metaphysical distinction between things never found apart is, of course, open to further debate.

Metaphysics and Ontology I

Addressing the issue of “Luther and ontology” requires clarity first on what ‘ontology’ is.  Within Luther scholarship, unfortunately, there has sometimes been confusion on this basic issue.  Thus it is that I will first get clear on the nature of ontology and how it relates to metaphysics.  Only then will I review some of the secondary literature on Luther and ontology, pointing to areas within Luther’s theology where the question of ontology is deeply important for his theology.  Finally, I will suggest areas of continuing research.  For both Luther’s theological predecessors and Luther himself, ontology and semantics are closely related.  Interpreters of Luther sometimes have forgotten this, ignoring ontological aspects of his own thinking, and thus projecting their own ontological assumptions upon the theology of the great Reformer.  

1.1 The Meaning of Ontology and its Relationship to Metaphysics

Many mistakenly believe that the terms 'metaphysics' and 'ontology' are coextensive, referring to the same set of philosophical issues. This is not so.  Both terms have a long and rich history that must be untangled in order to grasp the nature of their connection.  As it turns out, while the term 'ontology' ('ontologia', 'ontology', etc.) generally applies to a sub-region within metaphysics that specifically concerns general questions of being, the discipline of metaphysics is much wider, investigating the general (or universal) features (or principles) of reality presupposed by concrete experience as such.   

Historically, the term 'metaphysics' derives from the collection of 14 books by Aristotle appearing in his corpus after the Physics.[1] Andronicus of Rhodes probably titled these books "Ta meta ta phusika," perhaps thereby warning students that these texts should only be undertaken after mastering the books of the Physics, all dealing with the principle of change.  Metaphysics, on the other hand, connotes the study of those things that do not change. It is the discipline dealing with first causes, with God and the Unmoved Mover.  

Inwagen and Sullivan provide the following list of "metaphysics" according to Aristotle's conception.[2]

• Being as such
• The first cause of thing
• That which does not change

Aristotle, however, also famously believed that metaphysics is concerned with being qua being.  Accordingly, it is not just a study of first causes and unchangeable things, but examines objects "from a particular perspective, from the perspective of their being beings or things that exist.  So metaphysics considers things as beings or existents and attempts to specify the properties or features they exhibit just insofar as they are beings or existents."[3]    Considered in this way, metaphysics is a universal discipline, studying notions such as identity, difference, similarity, dissimilarity, and the categories that grant the possibilities of for being to be.   

Inwagen points out that what we mean by "metaphysics" greatly expanded in the seventeenth century, thereby confusing matters even more.  While older metaphysics dealt with traditional questions of being as such, categories of being, universals and substance, metaphysics since the 17th century became increasingly concerned with questions of modality, space and time, persistence and constitution, causation, freedom and determinism, and the mental and the physical.            

Bruce Aune clarifies the relationship between general and special metaphysics that developed with the expansion of metaphysical questions in the seventeenth century. 

General metaphysics includes ontology and most of what has been called universal science; it is concerned, on the whole, with the general nature of reality: with problems about abstract and concrete being, the nature of particulars, the distinction between appearance and reality, and the universal principles holding true of what has fundamental being. Special metaphysics is concerned with certain problems about particular kinds or aspects of being. These special problems are associated with the distinction between the mental and the physical, the possibility of human freedom, the nature of personal identity, the possibility of survival after death, and the existence of God.[4]

Oftentimes scholars claiing that Luther is unconcerned with metaphysics or ontology are conceiving metaphysics in the later seventeenth century sense of the term, and not according to the concept present in Luther’s own time.

The word ontologie actually develops much later than “metaphysics,” occurring first in the German language only in the work of Rudolf Goeckel (1547-1628) and Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609), and is later defined more fully by Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775) in his Philosophische Lexicon as follows: 

Ontology concerns the doctrine of being, and is understood as a name of a new philosophy of science that treats being in general and its properties (l.c., s.v. Ontologie 1. A. 1726, 2. A. 1733, ND dieser Thoemmes 2001).

Ontology is thereby the study of being insofar as it is possessed by any kind of entity. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) famously distinguishes ontology as metaphysica generalis (inquiry into the general categories of being) from the metaphysica specialis dealing with God (natural theology), the soul (natural psychology), and the world (natural cosmology).[5]  

So in what did the subject of metaphysics consist in the High and Late Middle Ages?  The following is my own (rather incomplete) list of traditional metaphysical questions of the period: 

•           In what does metaphysics consist?  Does the question of God fall under metaphysics broadly conceived, or is it a question of a "divine discipline" (scientia) falling outside of metaphysics proper? 
•           What is the relationship between the essence and existence of a thing, and what is the ontological status of the distinction putatively separating them? 
•           How can the distinction between actuality and potentiality be conceived in spiritual matters where the distinction between form and matter fails to obtain?  
•          Do universals exist and, if so, what is their ontological status?  
•          How is individuation possible without matter, and how should identity, distinction and similarity be conceived? 
•          What is the role of the senses in acquiring knowledge, and can this role be squared with the notion of illumination stretching back to Augustine?  
•      Can knowledge of God be "demonstrated," and what precisely is the nature of such a demonstration.   

John Wippel points to the two traditions developing after the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics.  In Book IV Aristotle talks of a discipline concerned with being as being and not with questions about particular attributes of being characteristic in the various other disciplines.[6] In Book VI, however, Aristotle mentions a "divine science" concerned with immovable and separate entities. Presumably, it is precisely because there is a domain of separate, immobile entities that physics cannot be considered the first science.[7]  Reconciling these two conceptions of metaphysics -- first science dealing with being qua being and first science dealing with separate and immobile entities -- spurred lively philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages as to precisely what metaphysics is. 

Wippel points out that Duns Scotus in his Questions super libros Metaphysicorum asks the question as to the proper subject matter of metaphysics by contrasting the approaches of Avicenna and Averroes: 

Is the subject of the Metaphysics being insofar as it is being (ens inquantum ens) as Avicenna holds?  Or is it God and the intellectual (Intelligentiae) as the commentator Averroes suggests? [I. I(1891-5, v. 7, p. 11)]  

After discussing the question of whether metaphysics can have God as its subject, Avicenna concludes that since God's existence can be demonstrated, and since no particular discipline can demonstrate its own subject matter, then only metaphysics broadly conceived, as the study of ens inquantum ens, can establish divine existence. 

While Avicenna placed God under the metaphysics of being qua being, the other great Islamic commentator Averroes disagreed, holding that one does not need to establish God as the subject matter of a unique discipline, for the existence of God can be established by physics.  Accordingly, the subject matter of metaphysics, ens inquantum ens, concerns substance primarily, not God.  Metaphysics properly studies substance, but includes that "separate substance which is the first form and the end or final cause of all other substance" (387).  Physics establishes that there is such a separate substance, and metaphysics examines that substance as well as all other substances.  Most 13th and 14th century thinkers followed Avicenna: Metaphysics concerns ens inquantum ens, not divine being. 

While Sigar of Brabant and Duns Scotus both include the question of God within metaphysics, the latter explicitly denies that God can be its subject matter since metaphysics deals with the universal and the question of God is particular (389).  Scotus writes: 

Even though God, however, is not the first subject of metaphysics, God is nevertheless considered in that science in a most noble way (nobilissimo modo) in terms of which [God's being] can be considered as acquired naturally in another discipline (sciential) (Ord. Pros., pars 3, q. 2, n. 193).  

Is is well-known Aquinas differs from Scotus in his notion that the being of God cannot be included under the idea of ens communes (being in general).  However, despite the controversy on whether metaphysics or metaphysics + physics can establish that the cause of the ens communes, Thomas is certain that the question of God is properly included within metaphysics (390-91).  Ockham differs from all of these thinkers, holding that metaphysical propositions have different subjects, accordingly both ens inquantum ens and God are proper subjects of the objective propositions of metaphysics.         

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[1] Aristotle did not call these books by this term, but named the discipline at work in it either 'first philosophy' or 'theology', calling the knowledge to which it aims, 'wisdom'.  See Michael Loux, Metaphysics.  A Contemporary Introduction, 3rd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2ff.    

[2] van Inwagen, Peter and Sullivan, Meghan, "Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

[3] Loux, 4.

[4] Aune, Metaphysics: The Elements (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 

[5] The preceptive reader will recall that Kant subjects all of these three (rational theology, psychology and cosmology) to merciless attack in his Critique of Pure Reason.  As the domain of metaphysics was expanding in the seventeenth century, the term 'ontology' gained currency in dealing with select metaphysical questions directly pertaining to being.  Elisabeth Maria Rompe's Die Trennung von Ontologie und Metaphysik: Der Ablösungsprozess seine Motivierung bei Benedictus Peterius und anderem Denkern des 16. u. 17. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Universität Bonn, 1967 diss.) provides a valuable insight into the process of the separation of the two terms.  

[6] John  Wippel, "Essence and Existence," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edts. Kretzmann, Kenny & Pinborg,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 385-410. 

[7] Ibid., 385.